


the residency

by ballantine



Category: Dunkirk (2017), The Great Escape (1963)
Genre: Escape, M/M, P.O.W. Camp, Slow Burn, World War II, prisoners of war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-16 09:39:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11826051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: In the camp, in the air, in the war – your worst enemy is always time.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't be intimidated by the Great Escape fandom tag -- I've endeavored to make the story understandable without needing to watch it.

_03 June 1940  
15:40_

They're well away from the wreckage, and the men have settled down into an oil-slicked numbness, when Collins asks Mr. Dawson for the time. His watch had not survived its none-too-brief dunking.

Before he can get an answer, there's the small matter of another 109 from the south. After, Mr. Dawson offers him his watch – he'd remembered the request, of course, because that was the sort of man he was.

It's late enough that Collins doesn't need to do the math, but he does it anyway, out of sheer habit if nothing else. The result is predictably grim.

He looks to the east, where thousands of men surely still await transport.

If luck is on Farrier's side, he'll be able to land his Spitfire on the beach at Dunkirk and join them. Like every pilot who has ever flown and seen for himself the curvature of the earth, the sheer size and wildness of it, Collins is a big believer in luck.

 

_06 June 1940_

Luck, Collins realizes with a low, sick feeling, had not been on Farrier's side.

 

_29 February 1943_

There is always that moment when the balance of the plane shifts and he realizes the hit isn't manageable, that there will be no adjusting and limping back to a friendly airfield. That he is, in fact, _going down_.

There's never any time to waste feeling worried about it, so Collins doesn't. He relates his status to the bomber he'd been escorting and begins preparations for abandoning the plane.

The Spitfire rattles and roars around him, like it knows what he's up to and wants to register its complaint.

Bursts of flak are still erupting sporadically from below. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the B-17 peel off – hopefully it will make it back home safely. He doesn't need a wasted yankee bomber on his conscience on top of everything else.

He shoves back the canopy. It is an overcast day, which is in his favor – the white silk of his parachute will be less blindingly obvious against the sky. Winter wind bites at the exposed skin on his face.

He sucks in a lungful of air that's sharp with the taste of cordite and doesn't think, just hauls himself up and over the edge of the cockpit.

He drops. He gets only a glimpse of his ill-fated Spitfire before he pulls his parachute, and then he braces himself as he swings like a pendulum above a deceptively still and snow-covered France.

Collins has been shot down four times now. His only consolation is that the Luftwaffe's bill on his account is still greater than England's by order of magnitude. If he isn't caught, if he somehow manages to make it back to England, they will put him right back up into the sky, because that's where he belongs – four galling pieces of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

He is considering all this in a corner of his mind when he fails to avoid the tree.

–

He also fails to avoid the German patrol. It is a bad day all around.

Blinking up into the line of guns pointed at him, he supposes he should be thankful if he is not killed on sight. It happens, everyone's heard the stories.

Collins isn't wearing his flight jacket, so his rank is obvious on his battledress – perhaps it is this that saves him from an ignominious end in a random farm ditch in Boulogne.

–

Following his mishap in northern France is a three-month sojourn in a transit camp near what he thinks might be Leipzig.

In this camp he is subjected to several beatings.

The men who administer them give the distinct impression that the pummeling is more diverting than interrogatory in nature. Each new session starts to take on a cast of routine predictability, but this only serves to emphasize the stark horror of it all.

He escapes twice, once in the back of a garbage wagon and a second time in a stolen guard's uniform. This second time he is pinched as soon as he is forced to speak; apparently German pronunciation sounds a bit off when filtered through stifled Southern Scots.

“I know just where to put you,” Kommandant Lange tells him in German, after he's dragged back into the camp.

The man has refused to speak English since entering the cell and is pretending not to understand him in turn. Collins catches on quick enough; Lange wants to force him to fumble for his secondary school lessons. _To help you improve_ , is the man's amused reasoning.

There's a streak of nonconformity in Lange, a curious trait for someone selected for such a position – what prison warden, after all, would want his charges to become better versed in the language that surrounds them, a language that serves like a second, invisible prison gate that would travel with them wherever they go?

Lange's eccentricity puts Collins on edge. As it is intended to do, he is sure.

He tongues the blood welling at the corner of his mouth – a gift from his latest interview with the interrogators. He asks carefully, “Wohin?”

“It is a new camp, designed for nuisances. You shall be a good fit.” Lange smiles faintly, like they're mates and he's referenced an old but familiar character flaw.

Collins isn't so new to the prisoner game that he doesn't know the implications of transport. The bottomline of this bloody war: everything can get worse.

“Luftwaffe oder... Schutzstaffel?” he asks. He tries to control his breathing as he waits for an answer.

Kommandant Lange watches him with a narrow look that he finds impossible to interpret. After an eternity, the man replies, toneless and no longer quite so amused:

“Die Luftwaffe, Collins.”

The next day he is sent to Stammlager Luft 3.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter and sporadically throughout the rest of the story, I have adapted little bits of dialogue from the film The Great Escape.

_22 May 1943_

Despite being newly constructed, Stalag Luft 3 still gave an impression of weary old age, with its barren perimeter and dusty yard and the palpable sense of resignation lingering in the air. The war might still be raging across Europe, the tall barbed-wire fence seemed to say, but in here it is already lost. All one would need to do is a slap the appropriate Dante quote across the gate, and the picture of misery would be complete.

He was brought before his new Kommandant while a clerk processed his papers.

Colonel von Luger was older than Lange and seemed disinclined to play any of the little games the other man had so enjoyed. Looking at his stern countenance, one was forcefully aware that here was an older officer who had seen his country transformed by two great wars and a cancerous national socialism. He had flat, pale eyes that seemed permanently settled into a sorrowful pinch and, unlike most of the soldiers and guards Collins had encountered thus far, he looked at Collins like he was truly seeing him and not merely through him.

Collins distrusted this first impression. It would be far too easy to slip up and look for sympathy in this sort of man, only to receive a backhand instead. A hint of compassion in a prison commander could be more effective than fear, he thought.

“This is a new camp, Squadron Leader.” The colonel paced slowly behind his desk and watched him closely. “It was built specifically for men like you – all our rotten eggs in one basket.”

Collins took that in. He did not voice the main question in his head, which was why on earth the Luftwaffe High Command thought it was a good idea to take all the officers most committed to escape, the men with proven _track records_ of escape, and put them all in one place. He knew Germans were proud of their design and engineering prowess, but this seemed a bit much.

“It incorporates all the newest security measures, so I want to impress upon you the futility of escape.” The colonel inclined his head. “But this does not have to be an ordeal. You will not be denied the usual facilities – sports, a library, a recreation hall. We will even give you tools for gardening.”

“Most kind,” Collins managed, after it appeared that von Luger was waiting for a response of some kind.

This response was not deemed adequate; he was quickly pinned by a cold look.

“You will focus yourself on activities other than escape. This way we may both sit out the rest of the war as comfortably as possible.”

He couldn't help but crack a slight smile at the sales pitch. “Have many officers gone in for this, Colonel?”

“Many more than you English would care to admit.”

“I'm Scottish,” Collins said, an automatic reply to an old offense.

The Kommandant waved a guard forward. “I hope,” he told Collins very seriously as he stood up, “that this is the last time we will speak.”

Collins decided not to take it personally.

–

He was exhausted by the time the guards led him through the gates and into the northern compound, where they were keeping all British and other Commonwealth officers. The farewell roughing-up from the transit camp goons and the subsequent long, sleepless ride was finally catching up to him.

This exhaustion did not stop him from noting the layers and height of fencing, nor the spacing of the goon boxes. But it added a flavor of tetchiness to his observations.

The compound was made up of well over a dozen single-story barracks, each one elevated off the ground – to make any tunnel that more easy to detect, Collins figured. Men walked to and fro over the bright yellow sand of the yard like they had places to be, though occasionally there would be a figure slumped down outside one of the huts, hands and face unoccupied by purpose.

Perhaps it was an off-day, because he was the only new arrival. Regardless, when the guards released him, there was a man awaiting him.

Unlike many of the prisoners milling about the yard, this man was in full uniform. Collins thought his collar might even have been starched. He was a group captain with a very straight back and a cane by his side.

“Squadron Leader Collins,” he said, saluting.

“Group Captain Ramsey. It's my sorry duty to welcome you to this camp, Collins.”

“I'm afraid von Luger beat you to the welcome speech.”

Ramsey's face took on a quiet look of reminiscence. “Ah, yes. Did he expound upon the merits of sport?”

“At length. He was so sincere about it, I almost felt bad for intending to escape as soon as possible.”

Then a curious thing happened: he smiled and Ramsey smiled back, but there was a distinct chill in his eyes. Collins wondered at its presence.

“That can't be wee Collins there, now could it? Jimmy Collins' boy?”

The Glaswegian voice was almost shocking to his ears after so long surrounded by the English and German. Collins felt himself lighting up even before he turned to look for the speaker.

A short flying officer stood a few feet away, hat cockeyed over a tuft of sandy hair. When he saw Collins straight on, delight and glee transformed his features. He darted forward, and they shook hands vigorously.

“Archie! It's damned good to see you.” He'd heard Archie Ives had been captured five weeks into the war, and it was a pleasant relief to see him again, alive and whole and looking just the same. “Last time was, what, must've been early part of '39?

Archie grinned and rocked back on his heels. “Long way from Cumbernauld, isn't it?”

Ramsey looked between them, and the chill in his eyes faded a little. “Ives, you know Collins here?”

“Aye, sir – his father used to take him to the airfield I worked at as a lad. I was there when he flew his first Tiger Moth.”

Something about Archie's tone, or the way details spilled out of him as if by habit, caught Collins's attention. He considered it for a moment and then asked lightly, “Do you suspect me of being a spy, Group Captain?”

He thought once he was in the compound, he'd be finished traversing gates. Naive, that.

Ramsey didn't look awkward in the slightest at the question. “Every man who enters this camp must be vouched for by two other prisoners. Simple matter of policy.”

He conceals the first tickle of nerves that try to make themselves known. “And if you can't find two men?”

“Then he is assigned an escort. Don't worry about it, Collins,” he said, turning and indicating with his hand that he should follow. “I'll send a runner around the compound, see if we can't turn up anyone else who is familiar with you.”

“I'll see you later, Archie,” Collins said, distracted.

“I'll show you the ropes around here, once they've cut you loose,” Archie called after him. He sounded unconcerned, but that didn't mean anything. Archibald Ives had always been able to put a grin on anything; he could be fresh from a funeral and you'd never be able to tell.

Collins promised himself he'd take the man up on his offer. After three years as a prisoner, if anyone knew their way around a camp like this, Archie would.

Inside Ramsey's hut, Collins is introduced to two other officers, Squadron Leader Bartlett and Flight Lieutenant MacDonald.

They straightened up the moment he appeared in the doorway and, although there is nothing in their pleasant, bland expressions that could be construed as conspiring, Collins felt like he had just interrupted a planning session.

“Please,” Ramsey said, gesturing to a chair, “sit, Collins.”

He took his seat, looking between the three men. “Is this the escape committee, then? If there's a plan in place, I want you know you can count on me in any capacity you might need.”

“He's not yet vouched for, Roger,” Ramsey said casually. He reached for his pipe and began loading it as if he didn't have a care in the world.

“Mac and I were merely having a chat about our garden plans,” Bartlett told Collins without missing a beat. “He seems to think he could get tomatoes to grow in this soil, but of course this is purely wishful thinking.”

“I'll grow them, and then we'll see who'll be doing the wishful thinking,” MacDonald said. He cocked his head and considered Collins with a friendly eye. “So where'd you train? Dalcross?”

“No – Montrose.” He nearly added _sir_ out of habit; he might outrank MacDonald, but it never felt properly real when talking to an older and more experienced officer. It had yet to, anyway. “I was still attending St. Andrews during the early part of my training – it was before they opened Dalcross.”

MacDonald's eyes flicked over him, studying. He exchanged a look with the other two, and Collins had to bite back what he thought of that – this was all perfectly understandable, he told himself irritably. Of course they need to take precautions.

He was just so tired of being surrounded by people who looked at him like an enemy.

“If you'll forgive me for saying so, Collins – you're rather young for a squadron leader,” Bartlett observed.

Collins met his eyes and said evenly, “We've lost a lot of men in the past few years.”

Casualties tended to hasten advancement in the ranks. He didn't say it, but there was a neat little silence afterwards anyway. Bartlett clenched his jaw; Ramsey put on a blank face that hid whatever he was thinking.

MacDonald stood. “I'll spread the word around camp for our friend Collins here, shouldn't take too long.”

He slipped out of the hut, escaping the awkward silence like any smart Scotsman would, if he were free to do so.

–

It wasn't more than fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before MacDonald ducked back inside and announced cheerfully, “Found a second.”

“There, now wasn't that quick and painless?” Ramsey said to him, but Collins was too busy staring at the man who had followed MacDonald inside to reply.

He was out of his chair and on his feet in the next instant. “My God – _Farrier_?”

It had taken him a second to place him, and not just because the man was attired in a set of patched and worn uniform pieces that looked as if they had been salvaged from up and down the ranks and even across branches. Farrier was gaunt, not a spare ounce of flesh on him. His skin had an unhealthy pallor that spoke of poor sleep and perhaps recent illness.

Only his eyes, sharp and thoughtful as they settled on Collins's face, were unchanged.

Farrier had always cut a fine figure around the aerodrome – tall and broad-shouldered and in possession of an officer's ideal demeanor: competent and cool to the point of impersonal. He was from a good family, educated at Harrow and then Oxford before the war, though he never made a point of acting like it – his background was more the exception than the rule for the RAF, even among the officers.

Collins, a green pilot officer nearly eight years his junior, had idolized him as the perfect fighter pilot. Though to his chagrin, whenever the man appeared, it always seemed to be when Collins was in the middle of a good-natured but boisterous row with the lads on the ground crew. He'd look up, a little disheveled and probably smelling secondhand of fuel and engine grease, and somehow there Farrier would be, walking by with an impeccably neat uniform and opaque gaze.

Collins did not let on that the man's current appearance disconcerted him; instead, he rushed forward to clutch his arm and said around a broad grin, “Of all the camps in Nazi Germany.”

“Your luck ran its course, I see,” Farrier said, folding a hand around his grip. His voice was just the same: dead sober but with a kernel of warmth.

“Hardly. By the look of this organization, I'll be back home in no time.”

“You haven't seen the organization yet.”

Collins was about to say _yes, but you're part of it_ when he noticed the others watching. He let go of Farrier's arm then, aware that he must look like schoolboy with a painful case of hero worship.

Ramsey said, “You're cleared, Collins. If you desire, we'll get you filled in on the details of the plan once you've settled in. Farrier, you'll – ”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then I'll see you both tonight.”

It was a clear dismissal. Farrier touched his elbow and nodded to the door. “Let's find you a bed.”

The other three had already turned away and were discussing some other matter. Feeling a little wrong-footed about the abrupt change in his status and decidedly not liking it, Collins followed Farrier out of the hut.

He looked around as they crossed the camp, observing again the height of the fencing and the distance to the treeline. Sand drifted up into the air like ash with every step they took; he didn't know how a tunnel could possibly be dug with this soil. Perhaps they were planning something altogether different, he thought.

Farrier said abruptly, “I see congratulations are in order. Belated as they are.”

“What? Oh,” Collins looked down at his sleeves and the three braids there. “Not so belated. Promotion came through just four months ago.”

He'd been pleased when he got it, but now he felt obscurely awkward; he never imagined a day would come where he would outrank _Farrier_. Apparently all it took was the other man being grounded behind enemy lines for almost three years.

They walked down the long line of huts to one on the northwestern corner of the compound. It looked the same as the others, except now it was his.

Inside, the lodgings consisted of a long hallway connecting a series of rough-hewn rooms with beds stacked three levels high. The mattresses were all made of thin cotton stuffed with straw and laid over planks of wood.

It was certainly no worse than the transit camp, Collins thought. Perhaps better, even, if the goons here did not partake in recreational interrogations.

Farrier led him to a bunk on the far east wall and indicated that he should take the bed on the middle tier.

“Bit close quarters,” Collins commented. “I'll have to remember not to sit up in bed.”

Farrier nodded at the bottom bed. “Griffith's been here for months and he still smacks his forehead about once a week.”

“And you?”

Farrier patted the top bed meaningfully and he understood. It was doubtlessly Farrier's indefatigable sense of responsibility that motivated his decision to keep Collins so close.

Collins felt an absurd little twinge of pleasure anyway.

“Anything you want to warn me about, since we're to be bunkmates? Do you snore, or...?”

“Snoring isn't the problem here,” came the flat reply, which did a good job of killing Collins's nascent grin.

Farrier noticed and for a moment almost looked sorry for it, but he didn't say anything else. After a brief silence, he leaned against the bed post and looked away out the window, his attention caught by something in the yard.

Collins wondered if he should take this as another tacit dismissal. Rather than stand there awkwardly waiting for a continuation to the conversation that may never come, he turned his attention to his pack and started shifting its contents out onto the bed.

The pack had been bequeathed to him by a dying soldier in the last camp. Collins hadn't known what was wrong with him. No one had, including the soldier himself. Rheumatic fever, some said hopefully. TB, others whispered while crossing themselves. There hadn't been much competition for the pack.

His accumulated possessions included an extra undershirt and shorts, a pipe, and what remained of his evasion kit after the goons had taken anything that could be useful in an escape. The small brass compass, the matches and water purification tablets – these had been confiscated right away. He was left with half a hardened bar of chocolate, a pack of chewing gum, thread and needle, and some safety pins.

“How'd you get the eye?” Farrier asked.

Collins paused and had to think about it for a second. There hadn't been an abundance of mirrors around and the pain from when the bruise was fresh had faded. He'd actually forgotten about the black eye completely. The lip bothered him more, as the scab pulled every time he opened his mouth to speak.

He glanced up, but Farrier was still looking out the small window.

“The goons at my last camp wanted to know how I got my hands on one of their uniforms. I wasn't about to give away trade secrets, so I'm afraid we had to agree to disagree about the whole matter.”

Farrier nodded absently. Collins looked back at the paltry contents of his pack. He didn't know what to think about any of it.

“Collins,” Farrier said, and stopped.

He turned to him, expectant. “Yes?”

He studied him for a long moment, and Collins had to ignore the instinct to straighten his shoulders. He met the other man's eyes squarely and wondered what it was he saw when he looked back. His eyes were dark and cheerless.

“I damn well wish you weren't here,” Farrier said at last.

He barely avoided flinching from the unexpected rebuke.

Four times he's been shot out of the sky, and Farrier only knew of two of them. It must seem like the worst kind of joke that Collins was before him now, fresh from the war and a newly minted squadron leader to boot.

“I wish none of us were here,” he said quietly. He allowed the hand he had curled behind the bedpost to fist, safe and invisible in its shame. “I might have – messed things up a bit. I can't change that. But now that I'm here, I swear I'm going to work as hard as anyone to get out.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Farrier said after a moment, tone odd. He turned to leave the hut and added, confoundingly: “Though that's not what I meant.”


	3. Chapter 3

His first night in the camp, the escape committee held a meeting in Hut 107 and certain things became more clear to Collins.

First was the fact that it was not merely his relative youth that had roused suspicion in Ramsey and the others, but the timing of his arrival as well. They had just started carrying out a plan in earnest and were hypersensitive to any hint that the Kommandant might be catching on.

Collins's second great understanding that night was that he had been plunked down into a camp of officers who were, almost to a man, marvelously stark raving mad.

The plan was breathtaking in its ambition: three tunnels were to be started with the aim of getting two hundred and fifty men out of the camp. They were going to dig straight down thirty feet and then out past the treeline – well over three hundred feet if the surveyor Cavendish was to be believed.

Roger had taken the liberty of giving the tunnels code names; no one prepared Collins, so he almost choked on his tea when he heard that his only hope for salvation lay in entering Tom, Dick, or Harry. After swallowing back a cough and discreetly checking his chin for stray droplets, his eyes landed on a knowing and amused Hendley.

Hendley was one of only three Americans in the camp and the escape committee's prime scrounger. He was bright-eyed, charming, and very possibly homosexual.

(This last was difficult to confirm, what with him being American. On one hand, he was very forward, which was typical Yank; but he also seemed urbane, which as far as Collins knew was not typical at all.)

“But why so deep?” Collins asked, to move the moment along. “Surely the descent alone will take weeks to dig, if not longer.”

And if a tunnel were to _collapse_ – the thought alone was enough to make one want to stand outside under the open sky for a good long while.

Willie Dickes, the English half of Roger's crack tunnel team, leaned forward. “One of the new security measures von Luger was boasting about: seismograph microphones all along the perimeter of the camp. If we attempt to dig a tunnel too close to the surface, we'd be discovered for sure.”

Collins suppressed the instinct to whistle. “These tunnels will be quite a feat.”

Willie nodded in agreement but said simply, “Danny can do it.” He and the Polish pilot had worked together on several tunnels before and seemed perfectly fearless at the potential for suffocation and cave-ins.

From there, the conversation moved to Ashley-Pitt, who had recently devised new methods for dispersing the dark soil from the tunnels.

When the meeting wound down in the early hours of the morning, Farrier led him silently back across the darkened compound, pausing expertly in the shadows of huts as the goons' spotlight swung over the grounds.

Collins waited tensely behind him each time, watching the light pass along the line of the other man's shoulders like he was back home and could tell time by the sun peeking over the hills in the distance.

 

_28 May 1943_

Collins settled into the camp quickly.

His mother had always remarked that he was almost too affable for his own good, and this attribute functioned much the same there as it had any place else. He took note of the divisions within the camp – for there are always divisions – and then proceeded to cheerfully pretend they didn't exist.

He breakfasted with the escape committee and lunched with those who were well shot of the war and intended to remain in the camp. He played cards with the other pilots and chatted up non-flight officers over by the gardens. He even befriended the Canadian airmen from Hut 119.

Farrier observed him in action for a week before asking one night, “Are you trying to make a point, Collins?”

He frowned up at him from his bunk. “I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.”

“You really don't, do you,” came the cryptic answer. Collins politely waited for one that made more sense. He'd forgotten how conversations with Farrier often felt like playing a game of chess one couldn't remember agreeing to.

Farrier propped himself up on his elbow and craned a meaningful look down at him. “I'll take you on in signalling, if you're determined to create a report with the entire camp.”

The escape committee oversaw several operations beyond the tunneling effort: there was the tailoring to outfit the escapees in civilian clothing, which would be a devilishly difficult job even under normal circumstances, let alone camp conditions where civilian clothing was strictly prohibited and materials hard to come by; forging, to provide all escapees with the documentation necessary to get them to a border; scrounging and manufacturing supplies to make the previous two jobs even possible and provide whatever the tunnel men needed; and of course signalling, to seamlessly and invisibly warn crews when goons were approaching. This last was Farrier's purview; he had men in every hut and on every work detail and reported to Mac, who ran intelligence.

“I'm still not sure what it is you are accusing me of,” he replied, distracted. “Aside from being friendly, I mean. But signalling, you say? I got the impression Roger was feeling me out on scrounging.” _And he was certainly taking his time about it_ , he didn't add, because he knew it would only make him sound petulant.

“I don't see any reason you couldn't do both. You'll have to be fluent in signalling anyway, unless you want to be looking over your shoulder every time you make a go for an acquisition.”

Collins couldn't argue with that logic. He didn't particularly want to, besides.

“All right, show me your grand system,” he said. He did his best not to sound so very pleased about it; he likely failed.

–

He was walking slowly along the inside perimeter of the compound with Farrier.

“How does one maintain a viable communications network out in the open under the nose of the German guards?”

Farrier paused and Collins realized he was waiting for a response. “Is that not a rhetorical question? Because otherwise I’m afraid I have some bad news about which job they’ve given you.”

“Collins?”

“Hm?”

“Do shut up.”

He bit back a grin and shoved his hands in his pockets. They were following the well-trodden and ever-shifting tracks of the many men who had taken such constitutionals there. The sun was out and it would almost have been a fine day for walking, if not for the scenery.

Farrier continued, “Aside from discretion, there are two basic goals for a successful signalling system: speed and complexity of message. Now, we won’t be sending detailed reports with this — that’s for Mac and his aides in intelligence. But we _must_ have the ability to relay accurate information as succinctly and quickly as possible in order for all other operations to continue going unnoticed. Today's test is a simple message – the most simple, in fact: patrolling the patrol.”

Collins listened and nodded and, all the while, he wondered if Farrier was conscious of what he was doing, if this all didn’t seem as familiar to him as it did to Collins.

Back before everything, they’d taken to having chats like this one around the aerodrome. Though perhaps to call it a _chat_ was being too generous to Collins’s contributions. Other pilots had referred to them as Farrier’s lectures, but that hadn’t been quite right either; his tone could certainly be similar to a professor’s, all right, but Collins was only interested in intent. And Farrier’s intent was always the same — simple interest in the topic before him and in sharing that interest with others. He liked to break down his subjects into component parts and figure out how they best operated — this was true from everything from flight paths to aerial strategy and it was now true for this signalling business.

If Farrier had ever shown any partiality for his company, it was likely due simply to this: Collins liked to listen and sometimes pushed back with questions.

They came to the the yard's washing troughs, and Farrier took hold of his elbow. Collins turned and gave him an inquiring look.

“We'll pause here for just a moment, if you please,” Farrier said. He dropped Collins's elbow in favor of checking his watch. “I've taken care to make sure every man on my team has matched his timepiece to mine.”

“So you know how long it takes for a message to be transmitted?”

“Just so.” He turned and nodded in the direction they had previously been walking. “The guards always patrol the grounds anti-clockwise in pairs. They will be coming around that corner. I have a man on the opposite side of the compound who will send a message as soon they have passed him.”

Collins looked around, trying to guess which of the various men lounging around the vicinity were part of the signalling network. Was the flying officer dozing against the steps of Hut 105 one of them? Or perhaps the fellow doing calisthenics a little further down?

After a moment, a thought occurred to him.

“How do they tell you the time the guards passed? A half-dozen men waving fingers at each other would be too obvious.”

Farrier nodded but only said, “See if you can work it out when the message comes through.”

Was this a test? Was he checking if Collins was suited? Collins didn't ask, but turned his attention back to their surroundings. He tried to put on as casual an air as one could while standing at a washing trough and not washing one's hands. He'd had a week of practice at this, for very often there was simply nothing to do in this bloody camp _but_ stand around.

Several minutes went by before Farrier touched his elbow again and said quietly into his ear, “There, watch it come now.”

Collins straightened a little and followed the line of his gaze. It took him several seconds to see and understand.

On down the row of huts, men were moving, but if he hadn't been looking for a domino effect, he might never have noticed anything at all.

Not one man made the same signal – one man standing next to a stove pipe lit a cigarette, another picked up the book at his side and began reading. The only sign that they were receiving and sending a message was in the glances and timing. Except no, Collins realized with a sudden start, there was also –

“Their faces,” he said to Farrier, who smiled at him. “They're using their faces like the face of clock.”

An absent scratch to the temple and jawline – if Collins didn't know it was almost 1130 in the morning, and if he hadn't been told to watch the successive line of men, he never would have noticed a thing.

Farrier followed the message to its last man – neither the napping officer nor the exerciser, as it turned out – and then checked his watch. A line formed between his eyebrows.

“That wasn't quite as quick as I had hoped, unfortunately. Gives us about a three minute buffer. I want five.”

Collins turned and leaned back against the trough. “Aren't you concerned that if you push them to move faster, it'll become more obvious? When you're a lad and you've laid a prank in the head teacher's office, you never want to walk too quickly away from the scene, otherwise someone'll know something's up.”

Farrier eyed him. “An oddly detailed example, Collins. I take your point.” He sighed. “All the same, we must do better than three minutes. I'll have to think on it.”

“Still – the Farrier communication network on display,” Collins said in admiration. “You know, you're damn good at this. I wonder that you didn't go into intelligence work before the war.”

“I wanted to fly,” he said, voice distant.

Collins felt his smile fade a little, and Farrier excused himself to talk to the last man on his relay team just as the guard patrol rounded the corner.

–

It did not take very long for Collins to realize that it wasn't eccentricity or some attempt at cultural sensitivity that prompted Colonel von Luger to provide gardening tools. It was frank necessity.

The food rations in the camp were, quite simply, subpar in both quantity and variety. The men who had been there the longest had a diminished quality to their bodies that Collins couldn't help but notice and privately dread. He had already observed this in Farrier, who had always been almost too powerfully built to fit in a cockpit but now had to make alterations so his uniform jacket would not hang too noticeably from his frame.

“Well, this _is_ bleak, isn't it,” Collins said one morning, observing his tray. It contained a small helping of eggs with a side of sardines and some tinned carrots for color. “Worse than rationing.”

“At least with rationing you still get biscuits,” said Archie.

Collins looked at him, aghast. “No biscuits? But doesn't the Red Cross – ”

“Yes, and you'll see how quick they get pinched in the next parcel drop.” Archie stared moodily down at his tray. “The men in this camp are like animals when it comes to biscuits. Only thing they're worse with is the tea and cigarettes.”

“Best if you don't smoke.” Farrier paused by the table and looked down at Collins. He added, “Then you can trade your tobacco for something.”

“Just as well I never took up the habit,” Collins said to him brightly. “I'll be a rich man.”

Farrier flicked a glance at Archie, nodded briefly, and continued on out of the mess.

“Farrier, being friendly,” Archie mused when they were alone again. “I dunno, it's a bit like a wolf trying to make friends with a sheepdog, isn't it.”

Collins squinted across the table. “Sorry, but did you just call me a sheepdog?”

He shrugged. “I'm just saying, it's like seeing a bear ambling out of the woods to socialize.”

“Have you ever even seen a bear?”

“I seen pictures,” Archie said primly.

Collins frowned and said, “Anyway, I really don't know what you're getting at with these wildlife metaphors. He's never been anything less than civil so long as I've known him.”

“Civil, sure. But he's usually about as warm as – ” He glanced at Collins's expression and hastily adjusted his bearing. “I don't mean anything _bad_ by it. Keeps to himself, is all. He's very – very _English_ , if you know what I mean.”

And, well. Collins had to give him that one.

"He's probably just glad to see a familiar face. He's been in the bag a long time, same as you – ”

Collins glanced up in time to see Archie’s face sort of — empty out. It was as if he was simply not there anymore. Spirit lifted wholesale from his body, leaving a slack face and empty shell. Collins couldn’t have been more disconcerted than if he’d spontaneously started to weep over his dried eggs.

“Archie?”

He was careful to keep his own voice normal, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but the previous instances had more more like flickers, a bulb threatening to short.

“Say, Archie, you won't mind if I have some of your vegetables? I see you got a mixed cup, mine are only carrots...” He kept an appraising eye on his friend's face and reached very obviously across the table for his tray.

Awareness slowly returned to Archie’s eyes like a bucket laboriously hauled up from a deep well, emotions slopping over the sides as it pitched to and fro.

His hand clamped down on Collins's arm just before he could get a grip on the tray.

“What's this, then?” Archie said. From his tone, you would never know he had just gone away. “You think you can trust a fellow countryman – ”

“My mistake,” Collins said lightly. “Thought you were done with them.”

He watched Archie return to picking at his eggs and told himself that it was going to be fine, that they were going to get out.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Do you really think they can all be done at once?” Collins asked one night in a whisper. He didn't specify, because there was little else he could be referring to. Everything in those days was about the tunnels.

It was past curfew. They were in their proper places for once, safely stashed away three by three in their bunks of cramped misery. Collins couldn't sleep, but that wasn't new; since arriving in the compound, it was a rare night that he went under easy, no matter how much he tired himself out during the day.

He was pretty sure Farrier was awake. He'd taken to watching the mattress above him, never sure if he could actually see the outline of the other man or if it was all just a play of shadows created by the roving spotlight that occasionally passed over the window.

“All at once?” Farrier said quietly, and he gave himself a mark for being right. “No. But then that's not the point.”

Collins put his hands behind his head and settled in. “Have we been attending the same meetings? If that's not the point, then what is?”

Farrier rolled onto his side; he could see a slice of his profile as he turned his head down towards Collins's bed.

“Consider this: Ramsey is this camp's commanding officer. He is responsible for the well-being of every man in here. For some men – the ones who aren't going anywhere – this means having access to a library so they can teach themselves engineering, or – or an exercise yard for perfecting their cricket bowl while they wait out the war.”

Farrier's voice was perfectly neutral, but Collins wondered at what kind of judgment lay beneath; the idea of willingly sitting out the war was anathema to everything he believed.

“Then you have men like Roger. He's sculpted his existence in this place to be about one thing, and one thing only. I'm sure Ramsey heard his idea for Tom, Dick, and Harry and thought, 'well, that will surely keep a lot of men occupied'.”

Collins took this in with a peculiar sinking in his stomach. He thought he understood what Farrier was trying to say, but he couldn't bring himself to a point of agreement. It seemed like such a bloodless way to look at things.

“Well – that's a bit depressing, if you don't mind me saying,” he said. Already he was thinking about what he would do with his days if he didn't have tasks to complete for the escape committee. He didn't like it. Curious, he asked, “Is that what you think? That this is all busy work to keep us from going mad?”

“Just because the journey has its own usefulness doesn't mean we won't arrive at our destination,” Farrier said. “Think of it like flying, Collins. You can't always be worrying about who might come upon you in the air, or what awaits you on the ground. You fly your plane. And when it comes time to put it down, you lower your landing gear and you put it down.”

 _Is that what you did, back at Dunkirk beach? Did you know you were going to be taken?_ Collins wished he could see him.

“Maybe you're right about the mental game part. Some of the men in here don't seem to be handling it all very well. Archie – ” he stopped then, not wanting to be disloyal to his old friend.

Farrier relieved him of his worry by pretending it was a normal topic of conversation. “Ives has attempted to escape over eleven times since he was captured. Twice from this camp. He's spent too many hours in the cooler.”

The cooler, right. In the transit camp they hadn't bothered with solitary confinement – as a punishment, it seemed like the guards were almost as bored by the idea as the prisoners. They preferred to beat misbehaving inmates.

“How bad is it?” he asked. “The cooler, I mean. Have you been in there?”

“Three times, but never in this camp. The first two times it was for ten days. The third infraction got me almost a month.”

A month alone in a cell. Collins couldn't imagine.

“What did you do, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Oh, sit-ups and jumping jacks, the usual,” Farrier said. And then: “Also math problems.”

What?

“ _What_?”

Farrier corrected himself, “Well, really just the one problem. Goldbach's conjecture. It's never been proven.” He paused and added in a completely different tone, “And thank God I didn't prove it, for that matter. Being stuck in camp and unable to publish the solution, that would truly drive me around the bend.”

Collins bit back a laugh. In its place, he smiled hard up at the underside of his bunk, safe in the darkness and in the painful corners of his mouth. He didn't know why he was delighted – much of it was surely disbelief from the sheer bloody boffinry of what Farrier was saying. But it was so perfectly, genuinely _him_ that it was either laugh or be overwhelmed.

Once he was sure he had a handle on his voice, and as he was regaining his breath and trying to find a natural way to prolong the conversation after such a strange interlude, he found himself asking, “So what's the Goldbach conjecture, then?”

The name sounded almost familiar, a faint prodding at the corner of his memory. This made Farrier's evident surprise in the pause that followed all the more maddening.

Collins said, “I _was_ studying physics before the war, you know. Got my Highers in calculus and all that.” He wasn't passionate about any of it the way Farrier clearly was – he'd just wanted to understand everything there was to know about flying.

Farrier waved a hand off the side of his bed where he knew it would be seen. “Don't be prickly, Collins. I'm not surprised that you've a head for the work, merely wondering whether I should tell you it.”

“Well, why wouldn't you?” he asked, perhaps a little peeved after all. He shifted on his mattress, resisting the urge to spring up and demand the details of the problem.

“When you can't solve it, I think it'll bother you. Drive you to distraction, same as it always did when your engine had a problem you couldn't fix yourself.”

“I wasn't like that,” he protested. “Now tell me the problem, damn it.”

“For the love of God and King George, would you two please leave off for the night,” came a plaintive voice from the lowest bunk. “I have thirty yards of wool to scrape first thing tomorrow morning. If you start talking equations right now, I can't promise you'll have a stitch of clothing when the time comes.”

There was a brief silence, during which Collins winced into the darkness. He didn't know how he had managed to forget there were others about; they certainly made enough noise shifting and snoring in the wee hours of the night.

“Apologies, Griffith,” Farrier said quietly, manners impeccable even if his tone didn't sound particularly remorseful.

“Yeah,” Collins put in, twisting on his mattress and directing an apologetic look down at the bottom bunk. “Sorry, Griffith.”

They lapsed into silence then, or what passed for silence in a hut crammed full of uncomfortable men. Despite his best efforts, Collins laid awake for a long time, replaying the conversation in his mind.

 

_05 June 1943_

He was returning to the hut from a shower when he stopped in at the library. He had half a thought of picking up a history book, something thick and dense that would take a long time to read. Then he saw Farrier set up at one of the tables and forgot the idea completely.

Curious, he drifted over until he was standing next to him. He angled a look down at the notebook on the table. It was opened to a page of foreign phrases.

“You're dripping on me,” Farrier said evenly.

Collins obligingly raked his hair back from his brow. “Working on your German, I see.” He eyed his expression for a moment. “What's the matter? Not good at languages?”

“Mathematics is a language,” Farrier said, not looking up. He sounded off, sounded like – something. “The universal language, as it so happens.”

Collins shoved his hands in his pockets and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Thought that was love.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

No, he wasn't imagining it; there was definite disgruntlement there. Still, it took a moment before realization fully dawned.

“Wait, are you – ” and he couldn't help it: a grin stole across his face. “You're bothered by it, aren't you. That you're not good at this.”

“Should I be _pleased_?” came the waspish reply, and Collins could only laugh in delight.

“Collins,” Mac said, “much as I enjoy watching you toe the line of suicide, I'll have to ask you to leave if you're not here to learn.”

“But I am,” he said, to the evident surprise of both men.

Under Mac's skeptical eye, he pulled out a chair next to Farrier and dropped into it. He looked between them and said, “Look, I'd be across the Baltic Sea into Denmark right now if my German was a bit better.”

Mac ran him through a few phrases. By the end, he was frowning.

“No lad from the south has any business having that bad an accent,” he pronounced. “I mean – really, Collins. I've a flight officer from Aberdeen who can pull off better German than that.”

He would feel worse about the feedback, but a quick chase and several beatings had already told him Mac was right. Besides, Farrier no longer looked so awkward about his own shortcomings with the language, and that was worth a little embarrassment.

“But you have the mechanics down,” Mac admitted. He eyed the two of them shrewdly for a moment. “Farrier, you're kept quite busy with signalling. It's not ideal for learning a language. What do you think about working with Collins here on your German? You're quartered in the same hut, yes?”

Mac was a very polite head of intelligence, in that he constantly pretended he did not know everything there was to know about the inner workings of the camp.

Farrier looked neither affronted nor thrilled when he accepted the offer, but Collins made up for this dull composure by thumping his shoulder and cheering, “Toll, toll!”

 

_08 June 1943_

He was in the manufacturing hut, having just dropped off some couplings he’d scrounged from the exhaust system of a supply truck, when one of Sedgwick’s underlings started a small fire with a makeshift soldering iron.

A bit of a mad scramble ensued as every man in the room leapt to put it out. The smell of smoke or any sign of fire damage would draw unwanted attention to the hut, and while the escape committee was very good at coming up with plausible explanations for much of their activity, not even the most gullible of guards could overlook the air pump Sedgwick was working on.

“That’s an afternoon’s worth of work you just ruined,” Sedgwick said to his man. He looked around and his eyes landed on Collins. “Collins, are you free to make a quick run to Tom? I have a stack of rails that need to be delivered piecemeal, but now I’ve got to get this mess sorted.”

“It’s no trouble,” Collins said. He tried to suppress the eagerness in his voice; he’d yet to actually see any of the tunnels.

Sedgwick waved him to the small bundle of metal rails, and he didn’t pause before grabbing it up and setting off.

Of the three tunnels being built, Tom was closest to completion. It started from Hut 123 and extended west into the forest. Collins approached the hut and caught the eye of one of Farrier’s men standing at a window. He signalled his intent to enter and slowed his pace to let the man pass along the message to those within.

Inside, it was all laid out plainly in a way it never would be if there was a guard within thirty yards of the hut: the wood stove was hoisted off to one side, the false concrete cover off to another. Collins was given a brief once-over by the signalling man keeping watch by the window, but otherwise left alone.

He leaned forward and looked down into the narrow square hole that represented the camp’s best hope. He thought he could see a yellow glow down at the bottom, but it was faint and seemed very far away.

He set his bundle down on the floor and then turned and lowered himself into the hole. It took a second for his feet to find the ladder, and when they did the rungs felt small, insubstantial. Ignoring a twinge of unease, he reached out, gathered up the bundle again and tucked it in close to his chest.

He descended a few more rungs until only his head was above the floor. The tunnel walls were practically brushing his shoulders.

Randomly, he thought of Farrier: the way he used to look in the cockpit of his Spitfire, shoulders up at his ears but somehow still relaxed.

Collins gripped the bundle tight and start climbing down.

And down.

And down.

He didn’t mean to keep his eyes on the shrinking square of light at the top, but there was nothing else to look at; the walls of the tunnel were dark and too close for comfort and his own body blocked any view of below. He could only keep steadily climbing down the ladder, faith that there was something at the bottom worth getting to.

It was so quiet.

His lower legs felt a shift in the air flow — not a breeze, certainly, but the sort of slight lessening of pressure of that indicated a wider opening. He hurried down the last few feet and found himself in Tom’s first staging area.

It wasn’t large by any means. By his estimations, it could only hold four men and the necessary equipment. The dug-out walls were shored up with wood he recognized as planking from the rafters and walls of the huts. Every few feet hung a small candle lantern, but even so his eyes strained to see the figure kneeling at the opposite end, at the opening of the tunnel proper. In the dim light, his dirt-covered skin gave itself away only through the burnish of sweat.

Collins crouched and shuffled forward — the height of the staging area didn’t allow for standing. He made it only a few feet before stalling out. Something was wrong.

He meant to say, “Hello Danny,” but what came out was more of a croak.

It drew Danny’s attention anyway.

He tried to hand him the bundle, but fumbled and dropped it. The sound of the metal strips hitting the packed dirt was muffled. Everything was muffled.

He tried to take a deep breath and regain his equilibrium, but even that felt like it was coming too slow. He reached out to lean against a wall and his hand hit quicker than he'd expected, the space was so small. A blink and the candles — did they gutter? Was that —

Rough-padded fingers caked with dry dirt gripped his face, tilting it towards the nearest light. Danny.

“First time,” he murmured. “And of course, they did not warn you.”

“Warn — warn me?” Collins said harshly.

He immediately regretted speaking. He shouldn't have wasted the oxygen. There was so little of it already — his mind sprinted around the small room, down the tunnel and then back, back up the ladder, trying to calculate how much air it all contained, but it was like trying to fly his plane without hands.

“No, none of that,” Danny said sharply as he began to spin out. He kicked aside the bundle of rails and let go of Collins's face in favor of grabbing his shoulders. If Collins had been a bit more in possession of his usual wits, he might have protested this dismissive treatment of the reason he was down in this godforsaken hole in the first place.

Danny gripped him and steered him backwards. His head scraped against the ceiling, nauseastingly, causing crumbs of dirt to fall down his collar and spike his nerves further.

His back hit the ladder. Danny took hold of his chin and forced it up as far as it would go.

“There, keep it like that. Throat open. Look at the light above, breathe. Wait here.”

And then he was gone again, receding into the black.

Collins didn't look after him, just kept staring at the small opening of light so very far above until his eyes burned with the need to blink.

“Willie,” he heard the other man call, somewhere deeper into the tunnel. “Come back out for a few minutes. I must go up.”

It took an embarrassing number of seconds for Collins to realize what he meant by that, but when he forced himself to look over, Willie was already emerging from the tunnel. He couldn't see him, but his questioning voice was too clear to still be anywhere but in the staging area.

“Have some water,” Danny said. “I'll return in a moment.”

 _I don't need an escort_ , Collins wanted to say, but he knew if he spoke now it would only draw further attention to his weakness. So he swallowed the words and, when Danny crossed the staging area and gestured, turned and shakily started to climb back up to the surface.

The journey up felt much shorter than the trip down had been.

Topside, back in the boundless open air and the reassuring solidity of wooden walls, Collins felt the beginning sting of shame. It made him uncharacteristically quiet as he sat while the other man put on a kettle for tea.

“It's the smell,” Danny said to him eventually. “It smells different down there. They think, oh, it'll be cramped. It'll be damp, hard to breathe. But when you're in the tunnel, and the earth's all around you, on your skin, grit in your eyes and mouth, back of your throat – ” he nodded decisively to himself. “It's the smell.”

He set a pair of mugs down on the table and took a seat across from him.

If Collins could have spoken in that moment, he may have added: it's also the sound. It hadn't been right, to be so acutely aware of the raggedness of his breathing, the beat of his heart. It should have been like when he was in a cockpit with his headset, but it absolutely wasn't in the worst possible way.

How was he going to escape, he wondered dully, if he couldn't go more than two feet without losing his nerve. The tunnel was to be over three hundred feet in length, and for most of that distance far more cramped than the staging area. What happened if he froze up again in the middle of that?

What happened to the men behind him?

He stared at his tea but did not drink it. After a moment Danny nudged it closer to him with a filthy hand.

When Collins looked up at him, he shook his head and said plainly, “Down there, we're far below the topsoil. That smell – most men only ever encounter it at funerals.” He shrugged, matter-of-fact. “It's the smell of a freshly dug grave.”

A second chill stole over Collins and, to cover, he finally managed, “It's remarkable that it doesn't bother you more.”

But then the man only looked at him blankly, exposing his comment for the nonsense that it was.

–

He spent that evening in the rec hall, trying to shake off his dark mood by absorbing what passed for cheer there.

“All right, out with it. What's wrong with you?” Archie said. “Did you receive bad news from home? Or – ” he squinted at him suspiciously. “Perhaps you've just been spending too much time around Farrier.”

Collins shook his head, for once not wanting to think of Farrier. He didn't want to know how he'd look at him if he knew how Collins acted down in the tunnel.

He hesitated, wondering if he could say something to Archie. He was a tunnel man himself – maybe he had better advice to offer than Danny, whose coping mechanism seemed to consist of iron will power and the hope of immunization through repeat exposure.

He waited too long to say anything, though. Couldn't find the right words. Instead, he let Archie draw him into a game of cards.

Perhaps this was the best he could hope for, he thought bitterly. Maybe he'd have to stay behind like one of the shell shock cases. Distracting himself with pleasantries and meaningless trifles. Desperately seeking diversion from the constant sick knowledge that the world outside the camp was embroiled in a fight for all their futures. It was inadequate, some days hardly _bearable_ –

Oh, look, he had three aces. Collins exchanged his two other cards.

“ _Good evening, Forces_ ,” chirped someone's wireless.

Immediately several voices rose up in a cacophony to instruct everyone to quiet down. Chairs screeched as men moved to get closer to the small homemade receiver. Without a word of instruction, a signalling man moved to the door of the rec hall to keep watch.

Collins glanced up from his cards. “What's all that about?”

But Archie just lifted a hand to indicate he should be quiet. Collins noticed that he'd let his cards drop, face-up. He sighed and threw his own down.

_Radio Padre, it is._

War had a way of stripping nuance from men's lives. Collins had a number of friends who'd either broke hard for the church or given it up entirely. And for those who still believed, even in here, they lived off BBC broadcasts given by men like Reverend Selby Wright.

Wright was Scottish, and even Collins could admit that his voice was a comfort to the ears. He had a grounded and familiar way of talking over the radio that made everyone feel like they were at the pub and having a chat with the minister on his way home for the night.

He tried to pay attention to the padre's sermon, but if there was a code embedded in his thoughtful, humorous musings – and going by the rapt, focused attention being paid by every man in the room, he was sure there was – he did not know the secret to understanding it.

After, Archie sat back in his seat looking troubled. At the other end of the table, a flight lieutenant said, “Someone will need to tell Ramsey and Roger.”

“I'll do it,” another man volunteered, tugging his uniform jacket on. “Going that way, anyway.”

Collins looked to Archie. “Well? What did it say?”

“The order wasn't for us. Prisoners in Italy, I think.” His brow furrowed. “I can't be sure, but I think he was telling them to – to stay put.”

“ _Stay put_?” Collins repeated. “Why would – ” his eyes widened. “They must think they're close to taking Italy.”

And if _Italy_ fell –

But Archie didn't look happy about the implications. Collins didn't know if his problem lay in the idea of the war ending before he got out, or in the fear of a similar order being given to them when the time came.

Collins watched him carefully for a moment. “You're not going to do anything reckless, are you, Archie?”

“It's like you don't even know me,” he replied, injured. They both picked their cards up and resumed the game.

The morning after next, Archie and that enabling Yank Hilts were both thrown in the cooler. They'd tried to dig under the fence like a pair of moles, but were caught like foxes – hauled thrashing from their hole at the callous end of a gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick historical note: 
> 
> The June 1943 'stay put' order was kind of an infamous fuck up; it resulted in 50,000 British soldiers being caught like sitting ducks by German forces in Italy. Of the remaining 30,000, 11,500 escaped and eventually made it home. The rest either disappeared or were shot upon capture.


	5. Chapter 5

_09 June 1943_

He was lying in bed when the entire compound was roused early in the morning by the clanging of a bell.

Collins, unfamiliar with this particular call to action, was slow to get up. But soon enough he noticed everyone else in the hut shifting to their feet and reaching for uniform jackets and boots. He rolled over and squinted up through the muss of his hair at Farrier, who stood beside the bunk buttoning his shirt.

“What does it mean?” he asked him.

“The camp's being called to attention.” Farrier glanced down at him. “I expect we'll find out why shortly thereafter.”

Collins grimaced and turned his face inward against his mat in denial, as if this strategy that had never worked with his mother would perhaps find success in the camp. He spoke into his arm, muffled:

“Formation's for training and parades. I didn't become a pilot to stand in rank and file.”

“You're not a pilot, you're a prisoner of war,” Farrier said, and the words might have stung if he hadn't reached out and rested a hand briefly on his bare back.

Perhaps it was only meant to be a friendly nudge, but that large, warm hand cupping his bare shoulder blade felt like something else. For a disorienting moment, all Collins could think about was arching up into it.

But Farrier lifted the hand and stepped away. “Now c'mon – get up.”

Collins wondered ruefully if he could coax forward another touch if he continued to play dead. His body, however, was already pushing itself up to get on with the day; habit, that.

Out on the yard, they arranged themselves in lines by hut and rank and waited to hear what all the fuss was about. Collins glanced around discreetly, eyes falling upon Archie's hut but not locating his friend.

Unease stirred in his gut. This ill feeling was not aided by their silent wait, which bloomed past an hour before movement beyond the fence line indicated their kommandant was deigning to put in an appearance.

Colonel von Luger was not a man whose features favored joy, but even taking this into consideration, his expression that morning was grim. He held in one hand a short makeshift tool that looked like the bastard offspring of a garden spade and latrine trowel.

The colonel addressed Ramsey but his voice carried over the lines of men. “Group Captain Ramsey, a little before dawn my men discovered two of _yours_ attempting to tunnel their way out under the northern fence line. Were you aware that Hilts and Ives planned to escape last night?”

 _Damn it, Archie_. Collins gritted his teeth at the unwanted confirmation of his worry. He felt more than saw Farrier glance at him from where he stood a few feet away.

No matter how he strained, he could not hear Ramsey's mild response. It was of course going to be a denial – even if he for some reason wanted to divulge such details, he couldn't; all escape attempts were cleared through Roger. Camp and escape operations were kept separate for exactly moments like this.

“And do you or any of your men know how they came to be in possession of this tool?” And here, von Luger hefted the shovel so it could be seen by rows in the back. For a long moment, no one in the yard spoke or moved.

The kommandant ran his eyes over the crowd. He called out, “You will all wait here, like this. You will do this until I am satisfied as to your knowledge of the tool's provenance.”

A few resentful mutters and groans broke out then, but no one stepped forward to offer him further counsel.

Collins looked over through the fence to where the cooler stood. It was held separate from the rest of the camp at such a distance, its occupants likely couldn't hear what was happening out in the yard. He wondered how many days Archie had been given this time.

He wondered this all through the hours they were kept standing there, until the sun was high enough to shrink their shadows and hide the evidence of their exhausted wavering from their own eyes.

–

His conversation with the escape committee that evening was necessarily brief, as they were all tired and in foul tempers. If Collins had any doubt as to how evident his agitation was, it was dispelled by Farrier choosing to accompany him to Roger's hut. Like he needed a _chaperone_.

Collins restrained himself from pacing. He straightened his back and shoulders and addressed them evenly and fairly, as fellow officers in the RAF were owed.

Then he received pushback, and his careful moderation fell apart.

Finally, he snapped, “If you have any regard for that man – as a fellow officer, as a countryman, as – look, you just keep him away from that stupid Yank, all right?”

Mac aimed a studiously neutral expression down at his hands while Roger and Ramsey exchanged a look.

Ramsey fiddled with the top of his cane and said carefully:

“We've seen your record, Collins. Their attempts have not been more reckless than your own, surely?”

This was true and also completely irrelevant, never mind the look Farrier was giving him.

He didn't know how to talk about any of it without sounding like he was impugning Archie's character. The inconvenient fact of the matter was that there were limits to every man. He knew without a doubt that these men knew it – but then, the military flourished on the basis of ignoring such limits. There were few alternatives, in a war like this one.

He said quietly, determined to sound reasonable, “That's not the point. Look – Archie's been in the bag for years, but he's still trying to get out like it's his first six months.” When the three men looked surprised at his knowledge, he reminded them, “I've talked to everyone in the compound. You can't tell me that his behavior is that of a stable man. And I can't believe it's such a simple matter of you having not noticed.”

Another exchange of looks, damn them.

“Ives and Hilts' commitment to escaping has given the camp certain advantages,” Roger said, evasive.

Collins chewed on that for a few seconds. The words did not benefit from the reflection. He glanced over to Farrier and found him frowning but unsurprised.

He met Roger's eyes. “Advantages – you mean because, without anyone trying to escape, the goons might start to look at everyone.”

Roger nodded, a casual _just so_ , and Collins flushed hard with anger. He didn't know what he was going to do with it, and in the end didn't get a chance to find out; Farrier came immediately to him, put his back to the others and tilted his head so he could speak to Collins alone.

“It's been a long day. Quarrelling over this now isn't going to get your friend out of the cooler any faster.”

“That's not the point,” he bit out, not bothering to lower his own voice. “It's about what's best for Archie. It's one thing for a man to knowingly give himself up for the escape effort – but to _use_ him – ”

“Collins,” Farrier said with flat exasperation, “there's no room for principles when you're trying to escape from a camp like this.”

It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling, to disagree so vehemently with Farrier. He blinked at him for only a moment before saying blankly, “I don't believe that.”

Over his shoulder, Collins could see Ramsey looking at him with sharp interest; Roger and and Mac weren't looking at him at all, but were whispering among themselves.

He and Farrier studied each other for a few seconds, each likely trying to recalibrate to this new world where they weren't of one mind about something so important.

Eventually Farrier looked away, out the hut. Perhaps he thought Collins's thoughts and eyes were thus easily bypassed, for he then reached out and touched his elbow. “Let's go,” he muttered. “You haven't even had dinner yet.”

Knowing Farrier, he meant it as conciliatory, but Collins was in no shape to receive the gesture as such. His lingering anger was slowly being replaced by something not unlike humiliation, as he realized he'd essentially thrown a fit in front of his commanding and elder officers. Worst of all, he'd gotten exactly nothing for it.

But there was nothing else to do; he saluted Ramsey and turned to go.

“Collins,” Roger said before he and Farrier reached the door.

He stopped and waited without turning around. He heard a heavy sigh behind him. “If it's any consolation, we intend to have a word with Hilts when he gets out. We'll talk to Ives also – perhaps knowing that Tom is nearing completion will convince him to wait it out.”

“Is it?” he asked, turning sharply to look back. “Almost done, I mean.”

Mac clasped his hands on the table and shrugged. His lips twitched just for Collins. “Close enough that it won't be much of a lie by the time Ives gets out.”

And for the first time in more than a day, Collins almost smiled.

 


	6. Chapter 6

_12 June 1943_

He was in the library, nominally to practice his German but really just to help Farrier.

He recited a series of simple sentences, all intended to demonstrate present tense conjugations, and then looked up to find the other man quickly smothering a smile behind his broad hand.

Collins lowered his book. “What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Farrier shook his head, making a dismissive gesture. But then, as if he could not help it: “You accent truly is atrocious.”

Oh, he knew it well; the bruises that had decorated his face with proof of this failing had only disappeared completely the previous week.

Collins made a face and tossed the pamphlet down in disgust. “I was always better at the reading and writing part. Perhaps if I am stopped, I can just pretend to be mute?”

Farrier made a noise in agreement. “Bat your eyelashes and pretend you're simple. Might work.”

 _Are you saying I'm pretty_ was the question Collins wanted to ask, but he only got as far as meeting Farrier's eyes before the words dried up unspoken. After a moment he looked away. His face felt warm.

He said instead, “Because the Gestapo are famous for their tolerance of the mentally infirm. Think I'm better off working on the accent.” He picked up the pamphlet again. “Here, go over the second part again.”

“Is that an order, Squadron Leader?”

Yes, his cheeks were definitely flushed. Oh, hell.

“Damn right it is,” he muttered and then, louder: “C'mon then, Merton College. Show me you know the difference between _denn_ and _dann_.”

Farrier watched him for a moment longer, generous mouth quirked. Then he made a great show of turning his attention back to his own pamphlet. He began reading dutifully:

“Ich kann heute nicht zu dir kommen, denn ich habe keine Zeit...”

 

_14 June 1943_

He was in Hendley's quarters going over acquisition requests.

They couldn't keep anything written down for obvious reasons, but had worked out a system of remembering using the chess set owned by Hendley's roommate Blythe.

Black was reserved for items that could be only be taken from the goons. White for everything else. King was Roger; Queen for Mac. Bishops for the tunnel crew, rooks for manufacturing, and on down the operation it went from there.

(Farrier was a knight. He had yet to request anything.)

“How did you nab one of the private bunks, anyway?” he asked. He'd been wondering since he first saw Hendley's set up. He and Blythe had a table and tea set, even private lockers apiece. Blythe, he understood – as the prime forger he needed quiet and privacy to do his work.

Hendley's gesture was somehow both eloquent and unintelligible. “What do you think? I'm a scrounger – I scrounged it.”

“ _I_ 'm a scrounger,” Collins said.

Hendley turned to look at him, inquiring. “And are you not satisfied with your current billet?”

He looked away from the sly gaze and wished he hadn't said anything.

Hendley lit a cigarette and watched him. After a moment he said, “Don't worry about it, kid. You're not too obvious about it.”

“Don't call me _kid_ , I outrank you,” Collins replied automatically, for it was not the first time Hendley had called him that. His face felt heated, but he kept his expression blank. “And I don't know what you mean.”

“There you go, that's the spirit.” Hendley slapped him on the back and stood. “Now how do you feel about some coffee?”

He looked up with sudden hope. “Tea?”

Hendley's face fell. The effect was extraordinary; in an instant he went from debonair to petulant. Even the cigarette in his hand seemed to droop. “Tea,” he said after a moment. “Sure.”

Collins knew he was being uncharitable; basic manners said to acknowledge Hendley's lack of enthusiasm and have coffee. But manners proved a weak match against the prospect of tea. He'd finished most of his Red Cross provisions a few days ago. He'd even gotten desperate near the end and started reusing leaves.

(He was running low on foodstuffs as well. He and Farrier had taken to pretending they each had more than they needed as an excuse to share with one another, an unspoken arrangement that would have sent Archie into a fit if he'd been there to see it, for it did little to effectively extend either of their stashes.)

Hendley moved slowly to fetch the kettle, but an outbreak of shouting outside forestalled further action. They exchanged alert glances and, as one, moved to the door.

In the yard, the source of the commotion was obvious: two men were working their way up to a fight. They hadn't captured the attention of the guards yet, which meant this wasn't knuckles for show.

“Huh,” Hendley said, his forward momentum slowing and stopping once he had identified the source of the noise. He returned to his cigarette, clearly not interested in interfering. And Collins was himself torn until a space cleared between the crowd and he saw who was involved.

“Oh, damn it all – it's Partridge.”

“Of course _you_ know one of them,” said Hendley.

He ignored the tone and said only, “Partridge was captured at Dunkirk. He's one of those who won't work for the escape committee – just wants to be left alone to sit out the rest of the war.”

Faint recognition flickered over Hendley's face, and he studied the scene with renewed interest. “So – shell shock, is it?”

He should be used to this by now, the way Hendley swanned around in apparent self-absorption only to cut right to the emotional truth of a matter at the oddest of times. Case in point: most other men would have assumed Partridge was a coward and leave it at that.

Collins shrugged; at this point, in a prison camp in the middle of the war, shrugging was all anyone could do. “He's stable, usually. But his emotions can be, well – a little volatile.”

He felt almost guilty discussing it, as if he was any kind of authority on the situation. Fact was, he wasn't that well acquainted with the man; they chatted in the rec hall occasionally, was all. What Collins knew of Partridge could fit on an index card. Yet that was still enough to make him start forward, ignoring his fellow scrounger's bemused look.

He owed it to Partridge, because his paltry knowledge included the fact that Partridge had flown at Dunkirk, same as Collins. Had been _marched_ from Dunkirk, same as Farrier.

Perhaps he could stop the fight before it grew into a bigger scene and attracted unwanted attention. Real fights made it harder to pass off fake fights, and that did no one in the camp any favors, least of all Partridge, who others would choose to blame.

Halfway across the yard, he spied Ramsey standing next to his garden plot. He had a hoe in hand but wasn't using it, distracted by the brewing fight same as everyone else in the vicinity. Collins change his flight path and came up beside him.

“Group Captain.” He nodded over at the gathering crowd of men in the middle of the yard. “Do you know what's going on over there?”

“A pointless quarrel,” said Ramsey with a commanding officer's typical impatience for personal grievances. He tossed his hoe down on the soft ground of the garden and looked around to check for approaching guards. “I will require your assistance, Collins.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You are friendly with Lt. Partridge there, yes? Never mind – of course you are.” He began to approach the rising argument. “When I stop this nonsense, I need you to pull him away.”

“And the other man?”

“Lt. Mucklin will stop when I tell him to. The bloody fool should have known better that to pick a fight in the first place.”

They always should know better. Funny how rarely that seems to work.

In the war stories he'd read as a boy, there was always a special bond between soldiers. It had been his favorite aspect, more so even than the glory or action. The men in those stories were always _men-in-arms_ , hearts and minds aligned in common purpose. Dissension in the ranks was rarely featured, and dissension among _officers_ was practically blasphemy.

Looking at the scene before him, Collins reflected that most writers of war stories were sentimental fools.

Partridge and Mucklin were evenly matched in height and form, though from the way they crowded up against each other, chests bumping and heads craned, it was not clear that either of them were prepared to admit this.

A flying officer stood a few feet from where the two were shuffling around. He wrung his hands and implored, “C'mon, Muck. We both know you didn't even mean it that way. Apologize and let's go join the cricket game, yeah?”

“I meant it!” Mucklin said, not looking away from Partridge's glare. “Of course I meant it. Man sits around like a lout while the rest of us are supporting the effort – it's practically treason.”

Well, Collins thought, it's a good thing they haven't let things get too heated. He darted forward and caught Partridge under the arms just as the man tried to lunge for Mucklin's neck.

“How dare you,” Partridge spat, struggling against Collins's grip. He didn't seem to even be aware that he was being restrained, or who by. “You flew _two_ missions before you lost your nerve, Muck. And now that you're safe here on the ground, you think you can lecture me on _loyalty_?”

“That's enough of that, I think,” Ramsey said coldly.

Even standing there with cane and cardigan and his trousers dusted with soil, the mere sound of his voice managed to straighten every officer's spine. Partridge stilled, face red and shining with sweat. He didn't look at Collins or Ramsey.

The group captain continued, “Collins, will you take Partridge to my office. I will be there shortly, after I have had a word with the lieutenant here.”

“Told you we should've just gone to the cricket game, Muck,” his friend said regretfully.

“I'm not a traitor,” Partridge said to no one in particular. He wasn't struggling anymore, and the fight seemed to have drained out from his shoulders on down, leaving him a loose bundle of aimless limbs. “And – and I'm not a coward.”

Collins stepped in front of him and turned, as if he could physically block Partridge from the sneers on some of the watching faces. He softened his grip on his arms and said quietly, “I know you're not, Partridge. Now let's go – his office, just like he said.”

They started away, but Partridge wasn't done speaking. “I did my bit. Saw what came of it.” He was staring at the ground now, and didn't seem to notice the way the men around them had started to break up and back away, like he was somehow contagious. Embarrassment and disquiet on every face. “I mean. I don't see what good I am to Britain if I get shot trying to hike to the Baltic....”

Collins looked over his shoulder and met Ramsey's eyes; he gave him a slight nod. The group captain's returning look was thoughtful enough to almost make Collins nervous.

–

That night, he found himself asking after something he told himself he never would. His curiosity overcame his prudence, but for once he's willing to say it was all Farrier's fault.

“I heard about Partridge,” was how it started. Farrier's tone was abrupt, and when Collins's eyes flicked up to meet his, he seemed uncharacteristically bullish.

Collins fiddled with the cheap tin fork for a moment, considering his words. “There was a small row in the yard, yes. But we managed to defuse it before the goons noticed anything.”

“Was he at fault?” he asked bluntly.

He was startled. “At fault? What makes you think that?”

Farrier had been making a methodical and slow tour of his paltry dinner tray, but now he leaned over it, the food forgotten. “Partridge has a history of being uncooperative. If he intimated or implied something that could be construed as a threat to Tom, we should be taking that very seriously.”

“He made no such threat.”

“You're sure of this?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Collins said, feeling an unwelcome twinge of annoyance. “The fight – it wasn't anything like that.”

Farrier sat back. “All right.”

And he seemed prepared to leave the matter there, but Collins was troubled by the exchange. There had been a latent hostility in Farrier not dissimilar to Mucklin.

“Has he... has this issue come up before? In other camps?” he asked.

Farrier had returned to his dinner. He shook his head but didn't look up, and when he spoke, his tone was dismissive. “Partridge has been content to stay in the coop since he first arrived.” He tilted his head in a move that was the closest Farrier might ever come to a shrug. “No one likes a white feather.”

“He was at Dunkirk,” Collins said. It wasn't a question or a declaration – perhaps it was a reminder.

They've never discussed it; Collins hadn't known if Farrier would welcome questions. Now he wondered what festered in the silence, and if he did them both a disservice by not asking.

“Yes,” Farrier said, measured. “He was.”

“He was marched from Dunkirk.”

Farrier raised his head. They looked at each other. Around them, other men milled around with the usual mealtime bustle and chatter.

“Prevarication doesn't suit you, Collins. Is that supposed to hold some greater meaning?” Farrier asked. He gestured at him. “You've been shot down. I don't see you using that as an excuse to abandon your duty.”

“I've been shot down four times,” Collins said agreeably. “But I've never been starved and driven across Europe on foot like an animal.”

He watched with faint apprehension as Farrier went immeasurably still.

The other man licked his lips and seemed to choose his words with care. “I appreciate that you like to consider yourself a man of boundless empathy, but on this particular matter, I'd suggest you're out of your element.”

But Collins didn't know what that was even supposed to _mean._ “Farrier, no man chooses to be broken.”

“You're wrong,” Farrier said sharply. “These days, that may be the _only_ thing he gets to choose.”

Collins exhaled, long and slow. He didn't know how much further he wanted to push this – Partridge couldn't help himself, sure, but neither could Farrier in his feelings on the matter. More to the point, he didn't see what good he would do by trying to persuade him differently.

 _The men are not obligated to like each other,_ Ramsey had said to him that afternoon, after the incident. _They are responsible only for their duty._ He'd given Collins a long look. _And we are responsible for them._

“Look, you can trust that Partridge won't interfere with Tom,” he said, meeting the other man's eyes. “He's not disloyal, or a rat – but, Farrier, even if he was, understand I wouldn't permit it. Neither would Ramsey.”

Farrier's eyes flickered down to where the triple braids of a squadron leader adorned his sleeves. Something too rueful to be appreciation, or too sad to be pride, contorted his mouth for a moment.

Collins watched him and didn't know what to say. He couldn't put Farrier back in the sky, any more than he could give Partridge back his sense of hope and purpose.

“So – four times,” Farrier murmured after a moment, tone suddenly altogether different. “Really, Collins.”

He almost welcomed the blush. He hadn't meant to divulge that particular detail – but looking at the other man's easing shoulders, he couldn't regret it.

He said lightly, “That's nothing – I knew one man who was shot down five times during the Battle of Britain alone. You're lucky to find a flying ace nowadays who hasn't found himself swinging from his plane at least once.”

Farrier was perhaps the only one he knew personally, in fact. He'd made ace a week before Dunkirk. Collins had spent three hours that evening working up the nerve to buy him a pint.

“You'll have to tell me about that some time,” Farrier said.

“The Battle of Britain?”

“Yes.”

Collins watched him return to his tray and the likely-cold remains of his food. He wondered how that story would be received, how Farrier would react if he told him about the time he was shot down over a frozen field in East Anglia and broke his leg. How he only got back to his station through the assistance of a handsome and very eager local boy.

But the mess hall, he thought, was not an appropriate venue for such a story.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ['white feather'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather) was a symbol for cowardice, specifically within a British military context, e.g. a white feather was given to men who didn't join up during the wars.


	7. Chapter 7

_10 February 1941_

He is somewhere in East Anglia, lying on what might be a turnip field.

The wreckage of his plane is about a quarter mile from his current position. It's some time past ten on a cold night in February, and he is fairly sure he's broken his leg.

He jumped the cockpit too late; this predictably altered his parachute's efficacy. All those lectures about the cost of his flights apparently took an inconvenient toll, and now his brief hesitation to abandon his plane has left Britain down a healthy pilot.

But he'd taken down a Heinkel, so really the outlook of night was pretty even.

Collins crawls another twenty feet closer to where he thinks the road is before he needs to pause for breath and grit his teeth against the screaming agony of his leg. He turns and flops onto his back, gulping in cold air and staring with wide, wet eyes up at the sky. There's nothing really to look at, just a dark overcast ceiling that lights up occasionally in the west, where the faint drone of other planes could still be heard.

He's always unhappily surprised at how uneasy the sound makes him feel from the ground.

Collins tries to rate this experience against the last time he'd been shot down, and it's a tough contest. On one hand, he has a likely-broken leg and is lying in the middle of the darkened countryside with no prospects for a ride anytime in the near future.

On the other hand, he isn't drowning in a jammed cockpit.

Tough contest, he thinks again.

He spends the next hour in the same undignified slog – drags his useless leg through the half-frozen mud until he needs to stop and breathe through the pain. When he finally reaches a field road, feeling the change in the quality of the ground with numb fingers, he collapses gratefully. He curls his body into a miserable parenthesis and waits.

He hears the vehicle long before he sees it; it's driving very slowly down the lane with its lights off, as is required during an air raid. It only then occurs to him that the driver likely won't be able to see him lying there in the middle of the road, all covered in mud.

With effort, he sits up and calls out, hands cupped over his mouth. Miracle of miracles, the lorry stops.

The driver's door opens and a torch clicks on, bringing a beam of startling light into the world. A man's voice calls out, “Hullo? You need some help?”

 

_20 June 1943_

He was in the yard pitching in on signalling duty when Archie and Hilts got out of the cooler.

Like most of the men in the yard, he stopped and watched as the two men strode back through the gates and into the compound. Their heads were held high and proud like returning victors. Seeing them next to each other, with their matching caps of dusty blond hair and stubborn expressions, one could be forgiven for imagining them related. Cousins, perhaps: separated by half a foot of height and, until recently, the Atlantic Ocean.

They made a ridiculous image, but Collins felt a grin pull at his mouth; looking around, he saw much of the same around the yard.

The two men split and headed in separate directions, each likely aiming for his own hut. Archie, Collins thought, was probably dying for a cup of tea. He wavered in indecision for only a moment before following Hilts.

He'd heard plenty about him, of course.

The men called him the _cooler king_ , a nickname that was half-admiring, half-mocking, and always uttered with a grin and shake of the head. He'd earned it long before he ever arrived in Stalag Luft 3.

Farrier, who'd known him from a previous camp, had offered a few more biographical details at Collins's prompting.

Hilts, the mad American – a term Farrier didn't (and would never) use himself, but was nevertheless clearly true. Hilts had been so eager to invade Berlin he hadn't waited for action from the men in Washington but instead marched across the border and signed up with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was posted to Britain a few months after the fiasco at Dunkirk, shot down in Northern France in March of '42. He somehow evaded capture for a number of weeks before Gestapo grabbed him up in Paris.

The details of how he came to be deposited in a P.O.W. camp and not summarily shot against a wall were vague. He'd likely been saved by the same faint grace that had been the salvation of other Allied pilots – the Luftwaffe, for all their corruption and complicity, preferred airmen be dealt with by airmen.

At the time of their conversation – just a day after Archie's escape attempt and the camp's long assembly in the yard – Farrier related these details without annotation or speculation. It had taken a little while for Collins to realize that he'd kept his description so brief because he actually _liked_ the man.

And it was a rare man, Collins thought as he followed Hilts into his hut, that Farrier not only tolerated, but liked.

He intended to have a word with Hilts about Archie, but such was his distraction, he didn't notice he was walking into a shrewdly premeditated recruitment drive until he was faced with Roger and Mac blinking at him from a table in the middle of the hut.

Hilts twisted around and eyed him suspiciously. After a moment, he said, “Well, you got me surrounded. Wanna tell me why?”

It was too late to back out cleanly. Obeying a terse jerk of Mac's head, Collins slipped past and took a seat at the table. He made to look as if this had always been his intention.

Mac lit a cigarette, once more appearing unconcerned. Collins briefly wished he had picked up the habit after all; he had nothing to occupy his hands.

Hilts stood there, surveying them through a grimace with his hands on his hips. “If you're here to find out if I'm going out again, I am.”

Roger didn't appear particularly interested, just glanced up vaguely and said, “Oh? When?”

“Seventeen days, the seventh of July,” said Hilts promptly. His specificity surprised Collins. But, of course, if he had a specific day in mind –

“Dark of the moon,” commented Mac.

“Correct.”

“Is Archie going with you?” Collins asked, folding his empty arms and leaning his elbows on the table. He didn't look over to see if his improvisation displeased the other two men.

Hilts cocked his head at him, considering. Eventually he said, “Yeah, sure. If he wants.”

Then Collins did look to Mac, who flicked his cigarette ash and said, “You do know that Ives is close to cracking?”

“Yeah.” His mouth twisted a little, and Collins didn't know how to read the expression – regret? Denial? Hilts glanced between them all. “You think it's better for him to go out in the tunnel, huh.”

“Safer,” Mac offered.

Roger sipped at his tin mug of tea; he was not here to talk about Archie Ives.

Hilts finally moved, shifting over to the small stove to pour himself a cup. Something stopped him halfway through the motion, and he looked sharply back at Mac. There was that mouth twist again. But eventually all he said was, “...Right.”

Mac didn't so much as glance at Roger, but the squadron leader seemed to know to take the baton anyway. He set his mug down and half-turned in his seat. “Hilts,” he said, talking as if they were already in the middle of a conversation. “It's possible, of course, for one man to get out through the wire – even get away – but there are in fact a considerable number of people beside yourself in this camp who are trying to escape.”

Hilts went subtly still. He said slowly, “I appreciate that.”

He glanced between them all again, reading their faces. And then, in an abrupt burst of movement, he started pacing. “Oh, something's coming, I can feel it.” He pointed at Roger, agitated. “It's coming right around the corner at me, Squadron Leader.”

Roger leaned forward, and – it was all Collins could do to not stare – grinned at the American. “My name's Roger.”

“All right,” said Hilts, nonplussed and still pacing. “Roger.”

And Roger, still with that unsettlingly chummy grin: “And your name's – Virgil, isn't it?”

“Hilts.” He grimaced. “Just – make it Hilts.”

Roger let the grin drop (and Collins noticed Mac had to take a long drag from his cigarette to cover his own, more sincere expression). He said, abruptly businesslike, “Right, well. As I was saying – Hilts, we have maps of Germany. General maps, that is. In fact, we have all the information that we need for the escape routes out of Germany.”

Collins found himself tensing almost as much as Hilts.

“But – what we do _not_ have,” and Roger turned meaningfully and glanced out one of the western windows.

Hilts took that meaning and finished the thought, “Is a clear idea of what lies five hundred yards beyond those trees.”

He was still holding the kettle in one hand, and it looked very odd paired with his grim expression. A man getting a cuppa at the end of the world.

“Right,” said Mac. “We've tried every goon in the camp, and it's a no-go.”

Collins knew all this very well; he had recently made an attempt on some local maps. Hendley had tried buttering up his favorite pet guard. Neither had met with any luck.

Roger hurried forward with his pitch, “We must know the exact position of the local town. We want to know where they hit the main roads – they must patrol them. Where they've got their military road blocks – ”

“And the local police stations,” Collins put in, thinking of his conversational mishap with an officer in Grimma a couple months ago.

“And most important of all,” said Roger, “We've got to know how to get from _here_ to the railway station.”

The three of them looked at Hilts, who smiled back. Collins was sure he hadn't known one toothy smile could contain so much rejection. An American specialty, perhaps.

“No. Absolutely not," he said. "When I get through that wire, I'm not going to be peeking over fences, making maps for _you_ guys. By morning I'm going to be so far away, you couldn't hear it if they were shooting me with Howitzers.” Hilts punctuated his words with a wave of his arm and adamant stabbing motions. Miraculously, no water sloshed from the kettle.

Roger nodded and looked down; Mac shrugged, unperturbed. “That's very understandable," he said, in a very understanding tone.

Hilts relaxed slightly. He waved the kettle vaguely. “I mean. I'd like to help but – ” He huffed a laugh and shook his head. He crossed back over to the stove and reached for his mug.

And stopped again. “But – interesting idea.”

Roger and Mac committed themselves to their mug and cigarette. Collins, lacking such props, tipped his chair on its back legs and studied the tabletop like he was daydreaming about dinner. Perhaps he'd get tinned herring tonight.

“How many you taking out?” Hilts asked, curious.

Roger sipped his tea. “Two hundred and fifty.”

Back down on the counter clattered Hilts's mug. He leaned forward and said in a whispered shout, “Two _– two hundred and fifty_?”

They nodded pleasantly at him, and Roger even said, “Yep,” which Collins thought might have been pushing it.

“You're crazy,” Hilts said, and shook the kettle at Mac and Collins. “And you too. Two hundred and fifty guys, just walking down the road, just like that.”

Mac waved a hand dismissively. “Some on the road, some by train.”

“Some cross-country,” added Roger.

“They'll have forged papers, clothes. Maps, compasses, rations,” Mac carried on, rattling off the shopping list that had been haunting Collins and Hendley's every waking moment these past several weeks.

But Hilts was unmoved by the enticement.

“Has it occurred to you that they'll alert every goon in the country, that anybody that can carry a pitchfork is going to be out looking for you?” He shook his head, scoffing. “Why they're going to swoop down and scoop you up so fast, it'll make your head swim!”

Collins sat back, thinking: well, that's it. If he wasn't convinced by that – but, meanwhile, Roger and Mac exchanged a look. They started to get to their feet, and Collins hastily followed suit.

Hilts turned in place as they passed by him. “But, uh – if you need any help with the tunnel, just let me know.”

“That's very good of you,” said Mac over his shoulder.

“Any time.” Hilts shrugged and nodded, awkward.

They headed down the hall to the door of the hut.

“Wait a minute.”

They stopped and looked obligingly back to Hilts, standing there with his trusty kettle. They waited.

He seemed to be struggling with some outrageous emotion. “You're not seriously suggesting that if I _do_ get through the wire and case everything out there and _don't_ get caught – that I let myself get picked up and thrown back into the cooler for a couple months just so you can get the information you need?”

“Yes,” Roger said simply. And at Hilts's incredulous look, he said, perhaps the most sincere he'd been during the whole scene, “One has to ask some very strange things in the job I have.”

“We'll give you a front place in the tunnel,” said Mac, reliably following up with the benefits package.

There was a long pause, and then Hilts said bluntly, “I wouldn't do that for my own mother.”

Why did Farrier like this man, Collins thought, baffled.

Mac said, “I don't blame you.”

Hilts nodded. “Well, okay then.”

Roger said, “I completely understand.”

“Well, _okay then_.”

Mac and Roger exchanged another look and Roger said, “Well – thanks, Hilts.”

And finally, they all left the hut.

 

_10 February 1941_

The torch swivels in Collins's direction, making him put up a hand in front of his eyes. “Yes, please,” he calls back.

But neither the man nor the beam of light move closer. “You RAF? How'm I supposed to know for sure?”

Collins supposes he should be appreciative of such sturdy rural precaution. After all, the newspapers all said the war would come down to the vigilance and dedication of the ordinary countryman. But he's freezing and his leg is killing him, so he's a bit peevish when he shouts back:

“I'll quote you Tommy bloody Handley, just get me off this field!”

This is apparently deemed adequate proof, because the man starts towards him. “Saw your plane go down,” he tells him as he bends down in an eager rustle of dungarees. “Been driving around for ages, looking to see if the pilot got out safely.”

“Oh – well,” Collins says lamely, irritation already draining away and leaving him feeling faintly guilty. “Here I am.”

The torchlight runs down the line of his body. “You, uh – you hurt?”

“My leg.” He grimaces, expression safely outside the beam of light. “Might be broken, hard to say.”

“Well then, let's get you out of the cold, yeah?”

He's a surprisingly gentle touch in helping Collins stand without putting weight on the bad leg. With seeming little effort, the man guides him around to the passenger side of the lorry and half-lifts him to the seat. Collins bites back a wince and adjusts his leg over the footwell.

The man closes the door firmly and rounds the lorry. Once he's situated behind the wheel, he takes one glance at Collins before reaching to turn up the heat.

“You out of Langham?”

Collins shakes his head and stifles a shiver. “Coltishall.”

The man whistles. “That's quite a drive. 'Specially in this,” meaning the dark. He glances at him again and offers tentatively, “If you're of a mind, I can take you by the farm first, let you get clean and dry? Maybe take a look at that leg?”

Collins eyes him through the darkness. Now that he's inside the relative warmth of the lorry and no longer distracted by the fate of a slow death by shock and/or exposure, he's re-evaluating the age of his rescuer. “Is there a doctor at this farm of yours?”

The next words, and the tone they are spoken in, only confirm his suspicions. “I've set a cow's leg in my time. Reckon I can at least tell whether yours is broken.” He can't make out much of the boy's face in the darkness, but he can see the broad grin well enough. “And I won't even be risking a kick to the head, not unless you decide you're very displeased with my work.”

His leg _is_ in a bad way. After a moment's consideration, he figures there is likely little damage the boy can do that would outstrip leaving it for another half-day until he makes it back to the station. He agrees to the plan, and then, shamefully, passes out in the passenger seat for a while.

At some point in their journey, the overcast sky makes good on its perpetual threat and lets loose an icy rain. The sound of it pounding the roof, and the way the lorry bumps and skids its way down the rough road, wakes Collins back up.

The boy notices immediately and says to him good-naturedly, “Brilliant timing, yeah?”

Staring out at the bleak darkness, Collins privately agrees. He gives up on his pride – he'd always considered it the most disposable of emotions anyway – and reaches his frozen fingers out to the heater vents.

“You have a name?” he asks after a few minutes. “I feel bad calling my rescuer _boy_.”

“Boy?” Amusement is rich in his voice. “I'm only a couple years younger than you, sure.”

Collins shifts and gives him a thorough once-over; even in the darkness, it's clear the boy is long, fit, and of prime fighting age. An awkward and unmistakable silence starts to grow between them, before the boy says, no longer amused:

“It's just my mum at the farm. My sister was a nurse in London, didn't make it out of a raid last October.”

Before Collins can offer condolences, he adds, defensiveness running roughshod over manners, “And I've already two brothers signed up. There's no one else. When I turned of age – what was I supposed to say to her?”

Collins says, uncomfortable and feeling a little rotten, “You don't have to explain. It's all right.”

“No, it's really not,” says the boy with a bitter laugh. And then something like shame must overtake him, because he immediately winces and clears his throat – the universal signal that they should both forget about the exchange. “Anyway, name's Arthur Rees. My mates call me Art.”

Absurdly, the old instinct perks up a little just then. It lingers over the boy's tone and the easy return of his grin and goes _I wonder_... and, thus startled, Collins throws about for a distraction.

He leans back against his seat and asks with a cheerfulness that feels forced but hopefully not for long, “Well, Art. Tell me, have you heard the song the lads were singing at Arras last May?” He treats the boy's curious, sidelong look as encouragement.

“Well here, I'll teach it to you. It'll pass the time until we reach your home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve McQueen's Great Escape character Captain Virgil Hilts was based off a real pilot named [William Ash.](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34058540) Ash really _did_ lose patience with America and join the RCAF early in the war. And he really was so determined to escape that he earned the nickname 'cooler king'.


	8. Chapter 8

_21 June 1943_

He was in Tom's staging area, breath coming deliberately shallow as he stared down the narrow length of the passage that was to be their salvation.

Dickie was on a rolling pallet somewhere ahead of him, but it was too dark to make out his figure. The sound of his steady, tireless chiseling could only faintly be heard. Small candles had been set along in the walls of the tunnel in even – and to Collins's eye, inadequate – intervals. They provided just enough light to reveal the limitations of space, the contours of how very well fucked the occupants would be in a cave-in.

“Well,” said the surveyor Cavendish behind him. “Are you going to go in or just loiter there like a goose?”

Collins half-turned and regarded him aslant. “Is there anything to see further in that I cannot surmise from here?”

“Why'd you come down here in the first place, if that's your attitude?” His tone was all affronted professionalism, offended to his marrow by Collins's amateurish eye.

“The rec hall's afternoon schedule didn't inspire any enthusiasm.”

He was almost grateful for the man's pompousness, for it provided a neat distraction. Collins started to shuffle awkwardly away, shoulders and head bent, trying to make his way back to the ladder at a leisurely speed. He was careful not to betray the way his heart was pounding.

He changed his mind about the damn lights; this way, no one could see the way his hands trembled.

When he emerged back into the bright, open air of the hut above, Hilts was saying loudly to Roger:

“Gotta hand it to you, Squadron Leader, it's shaping up good down there. Real good.”

“Yes, well. Willie knows what he's doing,” said Roger. He'd grown much stiffer with Hilts once he gave up on coaxing him to join the cause.

Collins joined the group, traitorous hands shoved casually into his trouser pockets. His face, he knew, was perfectly composed, but there was little he could do about his coloring – he must have been a little pale, for as he took his place next to Farrier, the other man's sharp eyes caught and held upon him for several seconds. Collins met his look and tried to convey only serene cluelessness back.

“It's grand,” said Archie, fairly shining. He'd been the first to take a trip down the ladder to check on the progress of the tunnel. “What do you think – done by mid-July, back home by Lammas?”

He was happier than Collins had seen him since before the war, happy like he'd been in Cumbernauld, the grinning boy who did cartwheels off the wing of his old Grebe. Paired with the warm light streaming through the windows of the hut, the sight soothed Collins's own nerves, if not the deep-seated dread in his chest.

“I think it'll do swell,” Hilts said. Collins thought his tone was attempting to be encouraging; he wasn't so uncharitable that he thought Hilts didn't care about Archie. “And God knows I've seen worse.”

Farrier stiffened a little just then, fatefully distracting Collins from changing the subject.

Archie said, to an accompanying nod of remembrance from Roger, “Spring in the Frankfurt camp. It rained for what felt like months, the ground was completely saturated. Had to dig in standing water.”

“Tunnel collapsed three times a week,” said Roger, and Collins had to forcefully suppress a shudder.

Not to be outdone, Hilts said, “I'll take your wet spring and raise you a latrine tunnel.”

And Farrier sagged then, as much as a man like he was able, against the wall of the hut. When Collins met his eyes again with a quizzical look, he merely shook his head in resignation. Left hanging, Collins turned to Hilts and said slowly, stubbornly uncomprehending of the horror to come, “A latrine tunnel. Surely you didn't – ”

Roger, pragmatic escape man to the end, was the one to finish the question. “You mean to say you dug through excrement?”

“No!” Hilts straightened and looked around between them all. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Okay, yeah. Kinda. What we did was, we had three-man teams, one digger and two spotters to switch off – they'd hold the digger by his ankles and dip him through the toilet hole – ” Here, several men blanched; Hilts clapped hard and shot a hand out like miming a plane taking off. “Out through the brickwork we went and into the ground.”

Roger hummed with worrying interest. Archie, still high on the hopes of Tom, could only nod dumbly along.

“Anyway, Farrier here can tell you all about it,” Hilts said, waving to the man in question.

They all turned to look at Farrier, who stood expressionless. After a long moment, he said reluctantly, “It did deal with the trouble of hiding the tunnel soil -- we simply dropped it down. But we had other issues concealing the plan from the Kommandant.”

Hilts braced his hands on his hips and nodded gamely. “Pretty awkward for Wing Commander Robin when he was asked to monitor his men's hygiene more closely. The Kommandant thought it was some kind of protest against camp conditions.” They all braced themselves. “And, yeah, it's true, the diggers did smell an awful lot like sh—”

“I was very pleased we were able to pursue other options here,” Farrier finished.

 

_10 February 1941_

He is drinking tea dosed with brandy in a kitchen that the owner can only light with candles.

It's quiet. Art's mother is away, helping her sister manage a newborn, and the closest farm is five minutes down the road. The sound of planes, which had been sporadic and distant in the lorry, is now fully dampened by the thick walls of the old farmhouse.

If it wasn't for the retaining chill of his damp uniform, he could be anyone, just a man visiting a friend one late night.

It doesn't feel quite real. Collins thinks the pain in his leg is doing his head in. Or perhaps it's exhaustion from the long night of sparring in the air and then crawling in the mud. Or the aforementioned brandy in his tea.

Art shuffles back into the room, laden down with two pails of steaming water.

“One for you, one for me,” he says cheerfully, setting the pails down gently beside his chair. “Here, strip your kit and wash up. Just going to grab you some dry clothes, then I want to take a look at that leg.”

He's gone as quickly as he came, leaving Collins blinking after him. Slowly he comes to his senses and lifts clumsy fingers to start the seemingly interminable process of unzipping his flight jacket and unbuttoning the uniform underneath.

Even with the nearby fireplace stoked high, he can't help but shiver when he's down to just skin and pants. He hastens to take up the washcloth dropped next to his elbow and plunges it into the nearest pail. The hot water bites at his chilled fingers, but the feeling of wiping away the mud from his face and neck is wondrous, almost sublime.

“These should fit,” says his returning host, before he stops abruptly in the doorway.

Collins pauses in wiping his chest and looks over at him curiously. The boy averts his gaze and waves the bundle of clothing demonstratively.

“You can thank my brother Bill. Seems like he was about your size.” Art drops the clothes next to him on the table: an undershirt, shirt, and thick knit sweater that looks deliciously warm. He turns to the kitchen counter to where a battered metal box is spread open to reveal bandages and bottles of antiseptic.

Collins clears his throat slightly; Art jerks back around, too quick and almost nervous. In the warm but dim light of the candles, his face looks flushed.

Collins says, “Need to clean the leg first, I'm afraid. I was having trouble reaching.”

“Oh. Right, I was going to – ” He trails off, clearly not seeing any profit in finishing the thought, and grabs up one of the candles.

He kneels down in front of Collins, eyes intent on the mess. He reaches out and gently feels along the length of the shin; Collins suppresses a hiss of pain and bites his cheek, but can't help the way the muscles in his bare thighs visibly tense up.

Art looks back up, and his eyes are dark. But then, so is the room.

 

_23 June 1943_

Farrier had been watching him all day.

He was curious in the morning when Collins ate so little, his stomach was mournfully growling within three hours; thoughtful in the afternoon during a signalling stroll in which Collins kept getting distracted by the dirt under his feet; and finally impatient in the evening across the table when Collins made a third mistake with the suffixes on his German verbs.

Collins sighed and passed a hand briefly over his eyes. He was about to start over, but Farrier's broad hand came down over the paper. The wide spread of his fingers were pressed down hard enough to bleach at the first and second joints.

He looked up from the hand and met his eyes inquiringly.

“What's bothering you?” Farrier demanded.

He felt a stirring of irritation. “A few mistakes because I'm tired is hardly – ”

He said flatly, “You've been off all day.”

Collins grimaced and looked down at the table.

It was the tunnel. Tom was drawing closer to completion every day, and he could still scarcely go down the ladder without falling to pieces like a civilian pilot in his first sortee. He dreamed of it at night, and brooded over it during the day. The obsession only served to make the fences surrounding the camp feel taller and closer.

He didn't know which was worse, the idea of having to admit to the escape committee that he was having this trouble or the prospect of freezing while down there and destroying the chances for every man behind him in line.

He thinks having to see Farrier's face after either scenario would be the final thing to do him in.

He could tell he was still watching him, frustrated and confused by his uncharacteristic silence. Before he even realized he'd been thinking of it, he heard himself say, “I think I'm going to go out through the fence with Hilts.”

He glanced up to find he's managed the unthinkable and surprised the other man. His face was wiped clean with it.

Farrier said, a little blankly, “But you don't even _like_ Hilts.”

He started guiltily. “I don't _not_ like him.” And at Farrier's skeptical look, he said, “Well, what does it matter whether or not I like the man? He's an ally, he wants to escape, I might as well help. And I wouldn't be going for good, for real, it'd be for – ”

“I know what it's for,” Farrier said, distracted. “I talked to Roger and Mac the other night.”

He watched him closely. “So you know Hilts didn't agree to do it.”

“Hilts wouldn't agree to do it because he knew any man getting caught stands a chance of being killed on the spot.”

Farrier's eyes were lowered and working hard with some other thought. But his tone was almost angry, which Collins thought was rich, considering this was the same man who turned back to Dunkirk beach, knowing he'd be grounded and likely captured.

“The risk doesn't change the fact that we need that intel,” Collins countered. “And that spot in the fence can only be used once.”

“Hilts will come around,” he said dismissively. Collins didn't understand the faith he had in the man.

“You wouldn't be so sure if you heard him the other day.”

Farrier leaned forward over the table, his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the room. He searched Collins's face intently. “Even assuming you're right – which I don't – why must you be the one to go along?”

“No one else has offered,” he said. “I've done it before, in Leipzig. And I know German. It just – it just fits, doesn't it?”

His heart was beating fast. Five minutes ago he didn't even know he'd been thinking of this but now – he was thrilled by the prospect of actually proving himself after weeks of cowardice in the dark of the tunnel. Finally.

“Farrier – you can count on me. I'll get the information we need and get back. You'll barely realize I'm gone.”

He couldn't let himself be bothered by the way Farrier only shook his head, lips pressed into a thin line. It was far better to cast his mind ahead to the new image taking shape, the one where the man was greeting him after his triumphant return. The relief and pride in his eyes; the warm clasp of his hand.

It was the brightest thought he'd had in days.


	9. Chapter 9

_26 June 1943_

He was in Hut 107 with Mac and Archie, and the Americans were up to something.

“Hendley's acting strange,” said Collins. “I mean, strange even for him.”

“C'mon, Mac,” said Archie, imploring. “You're telling me _you_ don't know what's happening?”

But Mac just reached the end of his pack of cigarettes, and was in no mood to entertain another's preoccupation. “You're the one who's friends with one of them.”

“But you're _intelligence_.”

“They've been buying up all the early potatoes in the camp. That's the extent of my knowledge _and_ interest.” He spread his hands with a harried expression. “I don't know what to tell you fellows. Whatever the three of them are up to, they're keeping it close to the  vest.”

Collins and Archie sat back from the table, exchanging dissatisfied looks.

–

It was the talk of the camp, an obsession that through no coincidence flared alongside the climbing mercury of the summer days.

Perhaps it lightened the regular tedium – several hundred men with nothing to do but follow work routines and daydream of a home far out past the fences. They all fell upon the mystery eagerly. The question undergirded every minute of the day; it was the only thing anyone talked about in the library and on the exercise field.

Gardeners tried to hold off on bartering their potatoes away in exchange for information, but to no avail; Hendley was too smooth a negotiator. It was generally agreed that he'd clearly been wasted in the air and should've been on the road selling war bonds to midwestern housewives.

As for the Americans themselves, the more questions they were asked, the more squirrelly they became. By the time July reared its head, the three men were sneaking silently around camp like they'd created their own subsidiary of the escape committee.

Inevitably, it became a bit of a competition.

Two men on the early morning signalling roster made the mistake of skiving off to investigate Lt. Goff's hut. It was only the happy coincidence of Haynes doing a test run at a sports diversion that the forgers in the library were not discovered by a pair of passing goons.

Farrier was not the type of man to raise his voice in anger. However, the look in his eyes as he stared the two men down afterwards must've done a decent job of communicating his feelings, for they went from muttering excuses to apologies in less than a minute. And that was before Roger caught wind of the whole situation.

Roger, it turned out, _was_ the type of man to raise his voice in anger.

“Has everyone gone mad?” he demanded after the thoroughly-chastised men were dismissed. “The American Business is not that interesting.”

If he thought his own words were belied at all by the clear bestowal of a proper noun on the situation, he gave no hint of it. By then, after all, everyone had taken to calling it that.

“Well – it's a little interesting,” Archie said, seemingly oblivious to the mood in the room.

Collins privately agreed, but wisely stayed mum after taking one look at Roger and Farrier's faces. He caught Archie's eye and angled a discreet nod towards the door.

They made a quick exit and breathed sighs of relief once outside.

“There's no excuse for jeopardizing the organization, I'm not saying there is,” Archie said as they started across the yard. “But I still think Roger's being a wee bit harsh – this is the most exciting thing that's happened since Malinowski accidentally gassed a barracks back in Oberursel.”

Here was the rare story Collins was not yet familiar with. “What was he trying to do?”

“Build a rocketbelt,” he said equably. He cocked his head in fond reminiscence. “It was going to have meter-long wings and run on methane.”

Collins didn't want to think about where he was going to get the methane.

Archie said, “You know, he still claims it would've worked. Says he knew a Russian chap before the war who'd followed a similar design.”

Movement out of the corner of his eye had him squinting back against the sun; Farrier had just emerged from the hut. Collins said slowly, “Terrible incidents with gas aside, I don't see Roger taking a kind eye to any mistakes these days. There was another cave-in yesterday, you know.”

He couldn't help but keep track of such things, even though it made him feel sick every time.

“I heard. But this is why the American Business should be a welcome distraction. Nerves have no place in a successful escape. I mean, if you think about it, really,” Archie said philosophically, “Roger should thank them.”

Collins thought of the alarming shade Roger's face had turned as he was reprimanding the two negligent signallers. “Somehow I don't think that's likely to happen.”

He and Farrier watched each other over the stretch of yellow dirt that lay between them. Collins wished he could read his expression, but the sun was shining with a thoroughly anti-British bias. He couldn't parse the finer details necessary to interpreting the other man's mood.

“Yes, well.” Archie's face cleared. “Did I tell you about what happened when I tried following Hilts after breakfast yesterday?”

He shook his head. Across the yard, Farrier turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Archie launched into his tale and, mindful of the wisdom recently acquired regarding welcome distractions, Collins did his best to focus all his attention on it.

–

“I just can't understand it,” he said over dinner the next night. “We know every inch of this camp. Where are they hiding?”

Farrier took notice of his fixed stare and followed the line of it over his shoulder. He regarded the three Americans, currently sitting with their heads bent in conspiratorial conversation, and then turned back to his food.

“Danny says it's grog,” he told Collins. He speared a mushy tinned carrot and regarded it for several unimpressed seconds. “The potatoes – he says they're making liquor.”

It was a popular theory and perfectly likely. But it didn't explain the secrecy.

“Not that I'd say no to a real drink at this point,” because it hadn't taken long to get fed up with the weak raisin wine Solberg concocted on a monthly basis in Hut 112, “but – why would they be so furtive about it – you don't think they think anyone would filch it, do you?”

He wouldn't pretend that every man in camp had a perfectly honorable record, but stealing another's hard-crafted liquor was almost unthinkable. Every society creates its own rules for getting along without murdering each other, and the camp was no different.

His musings went mostly unanswered; Farrier had about as much interest in the American Business as Roger and merely shook his head. He finished his carrots, all three forkfuls of them, and then sat considering his empty tray with resignation.

“Perhaps they're going to get the guards drunk and perform a jailbreak,” Collins pressed on, deliberately lingering on the subject in spite of his companion's obvious (lack of) feelings on the matter. Typical of his luck, however, this choice only backfired:

“As you surely recall, Hilts already has one escape plan waiting in the wings,” Farrier said. His tone was very even.

Collins flicked a quick look at him and away again. He suppressed a sigh.

Roger had been delighted when Collins stepped forward the week previous and offered to go through the fence with Hilts. Ramsey had regarded him with that same thoughtful expression he'd been wearing on and off for a while now – but if he had anything to say on the matter, Collins wasn't privy.

Mac had clapped him on the shoulder and said only, “We'll have to speed up those language lessons.”

“The point is to get caught again,” he'd reminded him.

Mac hummed. “Yes – eventually. But at your current level, you'll be nabbed at the first farmhouse you come across.”

“Maybe he'll be lucky and there will only be a woman for him to charm,” said Roger, who had very strange ideas about the power of charm, or perhaps the average woman's likely reaction to the sudden appearance of a strange man.

In any case, the escape committee laughed. Collins grinned broadly around at them all as, meanwhile, Farrier left the hut.

He hadn't tried to change Collins's mind in the time since, was the thing. Collins almost wished he would. Arguing with the other man was never anything less than deeply unpleasant, but even that would be better than the silences and cool civil exchanges he's had to tolerate since announcing his decision.

For God's sake, he found himself thinking. Even his mother didn't give him a cold shoulder this bad when she was worried.

But he was determined not to play the hero-worshipping boy this time, not go running after the other man asking for approval. If Farrier had a problem with the plan, he could voice it properly and they would hash it out like equals. He told himself not to be bothered by any awkwardness over the food trays.

It was to be a contest between which could hold out longer, Farrier's famous reticence or his outsized sense of responsibility. It was almost like a game, except not particularly fun for anyone involved.

  
  


_03 July 1943_

Sedgwick finally finished an air pump – the first model having been unfortunately smashed to bits in a scramble to cover up during a goon run – and the news was greeted with widespread joy among the tunnelling teams.

Air pumps meant no longer having to rely on crude ventilation pinholes, meant no more choking for hours on foul air and emerging with blinding headaches and throwing up rations no prisoner could really afford to spare. Suddenly the tunnellers could dig in the longer shifts. They could, perhaps, even  _finish_ .

Roger ordered the tunnelling teams to direct all efforts to Tom and that was as good as a grand announcement to the whole of the X organization. Men started thinking about home in earnest and the obvious shift in their moods trickled out to those who had never lowered so much as a toe down a ladder, or even knew of the locations. Even Collins, with all his worries about going through the tunnel, couldn't help but fantasize a little about it.

The tunnel and salvation became nonsensically entwined in the imagination, as if they might climb down the hole and, instead of emerging in the woods just beyond the fence, instead find themselves magically transported home, like little Alices in reverse.

“It's great, isn't it?” he said to Farrier.

The other man was standing a signalling shift opposite Hut 123, and Collins couldn't pass by and resist sharing the satisfaction.

He nodded briefly. “It's very good news. Willie was having doubts about the men's ability to dig the far reaches without some way to get more air down there.”

His tone was like that of a man chatting about the weather while trapped in an elevator. Collins's smile started to fade. He huffed a sigh and stood there, blatantly watching him for a few moments.

Farrier kept a strict eye out for any passing guard patrol, but he was aware of Collins's attention. His dark eyes flicked over to him.

“What is it?” he asked eventually.

“You know if Roger asked, any man in this camp would go with Hilts through the fence.”

“That,” Farrier said, quietly incredulous, “is emphatically not true. You think your friend Partridge would hop to? Would you like to go ask him?”

Collins glared. “Why do I feel like I'm being punished?”

Farrier's expression didn't change. “You once told me you're the youngest of three? Probably just unused to it.”

He ignored the dig, because it was true but completely irrelevant to this situation – except for how, being the youngest of three, he had infinite capacity for needling an elder until he elicited a response. So he folded his arms and decided to wait the man out.

A pair of runners went past, took the situation in with one sweeping glance, and moved on with poorly suppressed smirks.

Farrier's generous lips pressed together in a minute tell of frustration. He said abruptly, “When you first arrived here, you had a bruise covering the top half of your face. Do you remember?”

Of course Collins remembered. It hadn't even been two months previous. “It was a quarter at most.”

Farrier gave him a look. Collins put his hands up in acquiescence.

He went on. “They'd already questioned you. Suspected.”

“Sure, they question everyone they capture – ”

“Yes, but not for so long. Look, Collins, sometimes they get – keen on one particular fellow. Couldn't say why. But they get it into their heads he's a spy, and once they're convinced, there's no limit to what they'll do.”

Collins felt the remainder of his humour drain away. He fought a shiver. “Did you – have there been. Stories?”

It was the closest he's come to really asking Farrier about the long, blank stretch of time between when he saw him over the channel and here in camp. Everything in the other man warned him off and while Farrier has always been the type to keep his own counsel, this was something altogether different.

He was silent for a long moment, long enough that Collins almost regretted asking, but then he said unexpectedly, “On the march out of Dunkirk, there was this French officer. This was before they separated us, when we were just a bunch of miserable – ” Farrier cut himself off, and Collins didn't move an inch, was reluctant to so much as twitch if it meant distracting him from saying more. After a moment, he went on, “This officer, he was gifted with languages – had both his English and German, flawless accents. Attempted to use this to help some of the others, but this just made him a target. He was one of the first to be plucked out by the SS.”

When he fell silent again and stayed that way, Collins asked quietly, “What happened to him?”

He shook his head. “Don't know. Nothing good.” He seemed to rouse from his thoughts, looking sharply at Collins and away again. “Look, you want to be running this mission for Roger, you should ask him what happened the last time _he_ escaped.”

Collins was still thinking about what he'd just said, and how much of the story was clearly left unspoken. He met his eyes and asked, feeling perhaps too bold, “Would asking him be like asking you what happened after Dunkirk?”

Farrier stared at him with dark eyes. “Well, both stories certainly end the same way. Right here.” He indicated the camp with a flick of his fingers. “And we're the fortunate ones. Roger wasn't so fortunate for a while there in the middle – Gestapo had him in Berlin for a few months.” He took notice of Collin's sudden pallor and responded with a grim smile. “That's what you risk when you go with Hilts.”

Collins didn't know what to do with the anger that suddenly reared up inside him – he was not used to feeling this way, and certainly not with Farrier, of all people. He bit back the words that came forward first, and then he bit back the ones that came second. When it looked like the third arrivals were also no good, he pushed roughly away from the side of the hut, intending to give up the entire scene as a lost cause – but then Farrier reached forward, rabbit-fast, and caught hold of his wrist.

Collins stared down at his hand. He clenched his jaw and said, low, “All that talk about men doing their duty the other week, didn't you mean it?”

Farrier sounded frustrated. “I did. You know I did.”

“Then what is this?” he hissed, jerking from the other man's grip even though it wrenched his wrist something awful. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

Farrier was slow and deliberate as he straightened up. He tucked the hand that had reached for Collins in a pocket, out of view. He wouldn't meet his eyes, and that, too, was unfamiliar.

“You're right,” he said. Tone completely neutral. “I – I am being unfair. The idea of you going out there and sneaking around alone – it terrifies me.” He met Collins's eyes and they stared at each other. His next words were spoken very deliberately. “I'd rather someone else do it.”

Collins was speechless.

“I know this all makes me a hypocrite. I'm afraid I can't help it.”

Collins swallowed and watched with a suddenly dry mouth as Farrier's gaze dropped to watch the movement of his throat.

The heat seemed to have risen as they were standing here, though the sun hadn't perceptibly moved.

“Well,” he said eventually, anger having evaporated. “Can you at least stop being such a git about it?”

Farrier's mouth quirked, and he turned to lean back against the wall of the hut. “I'll try. But only if you stop acting so obnoxiously cheerful about going through the fence.”

He hesitated. “I've been told 'obnoxiously cheerful' is my default state.”

“Good point.” Farrier's smile slid down in something more somber, and he looked away. “I'll settle for you not asking me not to worry. How is that?”

“Sounds fair,” he said, turning cautiously to mirror Farrier against the wall. He nodded. “It's a deal.”

And then they both looked out across the camp and were quiet for a time.

–

It was late at night, and he was staring at the bunk above him, trying to decide if he could make out the impression of Farrier's body through the darkness.

He'd started struggling more with the nights. Part of it was simply the heat and the poor air circulation in the hut, but mostly it was the camp and the settling realization that if he didn't go through the tunnel, he might be here for a very long time.

It was one thing to know this during the day, when there were half a dozen activities spanning a spectrum from frivolous to useful – but at night, the thought pinned him down. An indefinite sentence, limited only by the darkest of mutterings (he knew enough German to understand when someone is joking about the Führer ordering them all shot) or most inaccessible of hopes (they were liberated or the war ends; either one required waiting on the actions of others). 

It was not easy to adjust to the notion that one was helpless.

Many of the other prisoners already had years of these thoughts. He didn't know how they withstood it. Perhaps Archie, with his half-mad drive to take any chance at escape, no matter how far-fetched, was actually one of the most sane men in here.

In the darkness, Collins allowed himself the time and space to want, and to wish.

He wanted to get off this mattress, climb up to Farrier's, and drape his body over him. Wished to press down so the other man could feel every inch of him, and maybe they could communicate just like that, determination and hope and longing transmitted through grip and lips. Collins thought: if he was just given the chance, he could be very persuasive.

He wanted to burn this hut and the camp around it down to the ground, wanted to make a bonfire of the goon towers that would blacken the air of the nearby town. And maybe somewhere miles and miles away, an Allied soldier would look up and see the smoke, and wonder.

He wanted Griffith to stop snoring.

But most of all, Collins wished he could explain his own fears to Farrier. Over and over, he racked his brain for a way to say _I can't go through the tunnel_ without exposing himself as a coward. He almost got there. He tried to imagine Farrier responding with understanding free of pity or disappointment, and got no where at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was mostly ready a couple weeks ago, but then I, in a series of incredibly unfortunate and dumb mistakes, permanently deleted about 1000 words. For a while I was too angry to so much as _look_ at the document. Moral of the story, kids: don't leave big chunks of text on your clipboard!
> 
> In other news, the big project that was taking up all my time and attention finished a bit ago, so updates to this story should resume a (more) regular schedule! Hurray to anyone who still remembers this thing!


	10. Chapter 10

_04 July 1943_

He was sitting up in his bunk and bare-chested in observance of the heat. A mug of tea unceremoniously appeared in front of his face, and he jerked back slightly.

He glanced up at the man holding the mug, and Farrier twitched his eyebrows at him.

“Oh, dear,” said Griffith, passing by with a towel slung over his shoulder. “It's progressed to bringing him tea in bed, has it, Farrier?”

“He lost a wager yesterday,” said Collins, not taking his eyes off Farrier's. He accepted the mug, barely feeling the heat bleeding through the thin metal because Farrier was _smiling_. “Tea service for a week.”

But Griffith was not actually interested in the particulars and wandered off, leaving the two of them with what passed for privacy in the early morning emptying of the hut.

Farrier put a hand on the bunk post above Collins and fixed him with an inquiring look. “A week?”

He grinned and sipped his tea. “Consider it commission payment for the quick lie. Or did you have a better reply?”

“I don't see how the situation called for one. Making someone tea is not exactly a declaration of any kind.”

“Isn't it?” he asked. He lowered the mug: grin fading, abruptly serious.

Maybe their conversation from yesterday was still agitating for change under the surface of his thoughts, or maybe he was more nervous than he wanted to admit about going through the fence. He just knew he was tired of approaching this sideways and under three layers of plausible deniability.

Farrier caught the change in the room's mood and looked down at him with clean surprise. He said, a tad blankly, “It's just _tea_.”

Collins waited. Maybe Farrier hadn't meant to show his hand yesterday – maybe he didn't even realize that was what he'd done – but he was about to learn that Collins could be merciless when he wanted.

Farrier made a faint sound of disbelief, and glanced over his shoulder, quickly checking that the room was clear. As if Collins would have broached the subject otherwise.

“After all this time,” he said, turning back. “You choose now to talk about this?”

Collins lifted his shoulders and watched with no small amount of heated amusement as Farrier's gaze attended the movement. He still hadn't put on his shirt.

“Rosebud's won't be in season by the time we're back home, so.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Collins' brow crinkled a little. “It's, you know, _gather ye_ – ”

“I know the bloody poem, Collins,” interrupted Farrier. “Yesterday we were arguing about your suicidal plan to go through the wire, and now you're proclaiming _carpe diem_? This is not a sequence that inspires confidence. Why would I accept such an invitation?”

In the face of this unexpected level of resistance, Collins felt rather young – he did not care for the feeling. He said, with a steadiness he was trying vainly to feel, “Because you want it. And I want it. And so I don't see why, while we're in this miserable place, we shouldn't have... this one little thing.”

Farrier was unmoved. “I can think of a few dozen reasons. Maybe you remember them, sitting up in the goonboxes?”

“Farrier, I'm not asking you to take me in the middle of the bloody yard,” he said sharply.

That brought them both up short. It took the other man a few fraught seconds to settle back to pretending he wanted to spend the rest of his life not touching another person. Once he'd taken care of that, he produced this gem:

“It's too great a risk.”

Collins closed his eyes and reached up to press hard on the spot just above the bridge of his nose. “Griffith's managed to find the space and time to manufacture almost two dozen three-piece worsted suits under the Germans' noses,” he said, keeping his eyes shut, because it was easier that way somehow. “It's not impossible to find somewhere where we can be together for half an hour.”

Distantly, he couldn't believe he was actually speaking this way, aloud and to Farrier. He'd gone mad, clearly. It must have been sleep deprivation. Or maybe Farrier had been right about his suicidal _carpe diem_ attitude, but Collins would never admit it if true.

“Griffith and every other team have the signallers at their disposal. Or are you suggesting I enlist my teams' help in this matter?”

“No – ”

“What signal do you think would work to warn us to tuck ourselves back in?”

“Farrier,” he said weakly, shaking his head. Then he stopped. He looked down at the mug in his lap, ran this thumbnail over the dent in its side. He didn't have words to express what he was feeling, this strange mixture of stubbornness and disappointment.

_What did you expect? You're not schoolboys, sneaking around in the evenings and going for a tumble in a field._

“Don't you ever get tired?” he asked. He thought he knew the answer, but he was curious how the other man would say.

Farrier's immediate reply was to reach up and push Collins' hair off his forehead.

The pads of his fingers and palm were rough with callouses. He didn't think Farrier used to have callouses, before being captured.

With a barely perceptible sigh, Farrier let his hand drop. He told Collins, “I don't let myself.”

It took a second for him to remember what he was referring to, then: “Must be nice.”

He knew he probably sounded bitter but for he didn't care. In fact, he should probably regret the whole exchange, wish like hell he'd never opened his mouth. But he didn't. That they were even talking about this out in the open felt daring, the first of several gambits.

With men like them, there was rarely an easy, natural progression to these things, no matter that the feeling in one's chest said it should be otherwise. There was always some danger, and one man always had to be the first to reach out, to risk it.

Let Farrier contemplate the fact that it hadn't been him.

  
  


_10 February 1941_

Art ties off the final cravat around the leg splint and sits back. “Well, nothing's poking out where it shouldn't be poking out and the swelling's not too bad – if it's a break, I think it's a clean one.”

“Doc, you have my deepest gratitude,” says Collins. He smiles at him, because he's had a generous addition of brandy since the first drink and alcohol always did turn him into a bit of a flirt.

It's fun, he thinks, to see the boy blush.

He shifts to the edge of the table, intent on lowering himself to one of the chairs, and Art appears before him to help.

He hops down on one leg, bracing himself against his shoulders. Art dodges his gaze, his breath warm on his cheek. Collins permits himself to be lowered into his previously vacated chair.

“You're good at this,” he says, this time with no tease in his voice. “You'd make a good medic. Steady, strong hands like those.”

All right, so there was a bit of a tease there.

Art stubbornly backs away. He makes his way over to the kettle and pours two fresh cups, asking over his shoulder, “Will you still be able to fly?”

Collins grimaces but says, “If things get dire enough, I'm not sure they'll be able to stop me.” Art looks suitably impressed as he returns to the table with a pair of full cups.

It is very freeing, to be able to put on such bravado without any of the jeering or skeptical snorts of older pilots. Art doesn't know enough to call him on being full of it.

Well, that's a souring thought.

Collins is not used to being on the receiving side of blatant admiration. It reminds him uncomfortably of himself as a younger man – except the object of his own worship had been far more worthy of the attention. This war is leaving the youth of Britain a secondhand world full of knockoff heroes.

Distracted, he forgets about his leg and tries to stand, meaning to visit the lavatory and use the moment of privacy to regain his good spirits. But the leg immediately registers its complaint and he falls back, hissing through clenched teeth.

Art is kneeling by his side in a second, hands hovering over the leg, gently nudging it to straighten. He checks the splint.

“You mustn't forget it's broken,” he says, reproachful. “Recovery time can double if you're prone to aggravating it.”

Collins nods wearily along and then stops and eyes him; he's still on his knees on the floor, his hand still resting on Collins's lower thigh. “Art, are you... trying to take advantage?”

“No!” He flushes a brilliant rose color and jerks his hand away. “I wouldn't, I don't – ”

He breathes out a laugh. He tips his head to the side, philosophical. “Ah. Pity, that.”

The boy shuts up and stares at him, so scandalized that Collins almost wonders if, in his cloud of pain and drink, he's made a terrible miscalculation. But slowly, Art's shoulders come down from his ears. He doesn't stop staring at Collins, though.

“I hope you're more careful than this down at the pub,” he says, and Collins relaxes minutely. “Or does the RAF take a kinder view towards poofs than the rest of the country?”

He is mildly impressed that he just came out and said it. He waves a hand. “I assumed I was in safe company.”

Art pushes to his feet, and Collins is very sorry to see that the blush has gone, and he is not smiling.

“How could you tell?” Art asks quietly.

“I got very good at reading people.” He pauses. “Have you never met – another?”

“Yeah,” he says, and doesn't seem to notice Collins's relief. “There was another lad, in secondary. We – a few times. But I don't think we actually _liked_ each other all that much.”

“Unfortunately common experience, for those like us,” Collins says with a wry smile.

“You seem – _normal_.”

“Thank you,” Collins says. He's going for very grave, but his lips betray him and twitch.

“No, I mean – you don't act like you think there's anything wrong with it.”

He can feel his face soften. “I don't.”

“But aren't you ever frightened? Or,” Art's thick fringe of eyelashes sweep down, eyes darting away, concealing even here in this private space, “or ashamed or anything?”

It's not really in Collins' nature to be either of those things, but saying so would be a bit much. And it feels dishonest somehow, like he's trying to negate the boy's feelings – feeling which are, of course, perfectly reasonable, born as they are out of a society that fears and scorns him.

“I don't let myself be,” he says instead, but that's apparently no good either, judging from the exasperated look Art throws him.

  
  


_04 July 1943_

He was getting dressed and had rarely in his life felt so disgruntled about putting on a shirt.

From behind him, that damned even voice: “Collins, really. You were always so good-natured about losing back at Hornchurch.”

“I didn't lose very often,” he said, unthinking. He felt his face crease. “And those were games.”

“And this isn't?”

“ _No_.” He was so appalled, he turned around to stare at him. After a moment he narrowed his eyes. “Is that what you think, that I'm playing around – you think I would, with what they say Germans do to people like us? And never mind the RAF, or our commissions.”

“No, of course I don't think that,” said Farrier, the liar.

Collins shook his head and told him, “You mistake my lack of shame for a lack of discretion.”

He turned stiffly and resumed buttoning his shirt. It was too hot to bother with the top buttons, and he positively loathed the idea of tucking the ends into his trousers. Plenty of men in the camp didn't bother, but Roger and Ramsey were not among their number. After a moment of indecision, he decided he could do with the mental armor of decorum just then and began straightening up his appearance.

He was surprised to hear the burst of laughter from Farrier.

He looked over in time to see the other man smother the luxurious amused stretch of his mouth with a broad hand.

“What is it?” he demanded.

Farrier shook his head as he walked closer. He leaned against the bunk right next to him, close enough to smack.

“It's just – alone among the ranks of the RAF, I have found the one thing that breaks Sweet Collins' infamous cheer. It's a pity I can't share the details of it with anyone.”

Christ, he'd forgotten about that nickname. Originally bestowed by the lads on the ground crew, it hadn't taken long to spread across the station. Not long after Dunkirk, he'd been transferred to Coltishall, where no one had known him from before. By that point, he'd seen more than enough to temper his daily mood to less exceptional levels, and the nickname died a natural death.

“Famous cheer, I think you mean.”

“Oh, no,” said Farrier. “I do mean infamous. You don't know what it was like waking up at 3 for night flights with you.”

Collins didn't flush; it wasn't his fault he had natural reserves of energy. “You never said anything.”

“Complaining would have been a waste of resources. I needed to put my caffeine towards more critical functions.”

Farrier was still drifting closer, his gaze warm. He didn't even seem aware he was doing it, and it simply wasn't _fair_.

Casual as you please, like he did it every day, he reached out to where Collins shirt was still untucked in the front. He slipped his hand beneath the fabric to settle over the skin above his waistband, warm and rough.

His hand definitely didn't used to be this calloused, Collins thought blankly.

“I thought you were the type of man who didn't change his mind once it was made up,” he heard himself say.

“Collins, you strain one's discipline to breaking.”

He searched his face. “Farrier – ”

“I'm not promising anything,” he said.

“Such generosity.”

Farrier ignored that, which was probably for the best. “You're going through the wire. When you make it back here in one piece, we'll talk. We'll sort this all out then.” His grip tightened, and he shook him a little, but only because Collins agreeably swayed at the direction. “Agreed?”

Despite the thrill he felt at eliciting the promise, Collins couldn't resist saying, “Sort it out?” He pressed into the other man's touch, and reached up to cover his hand, holding it in place. “You're a real romantic, Farrier.”

“Romantic,” repeated Farrier in a breath, shaking his head in amazement. “You are an odd one.”

Farrier was only surprised because he couldn't know what secrets his eyes let slip sometimes when he looked at him. He should've expected Collins coming from miles away, throwing out a beacon like that.

Incredibly, and to his delight, Farrier had gone a dull sort of red. Collins didn't think he'd feel this victorious if he dropped a bomb on Hitler himself.

–

Farrier left first, claiming prudence despite the fact that everyone in camp had to be used to seeing the two of them walking together. Collins didn't quibble, however; he was trying to get his own head on straight and calm down. He felt like he could take a running leap off a hut roof and likely attain cruising altitude.

It was only this state of distraction that allowed him to reach the door and swing out of the hut unawares of the commotion all around him. He emerged under the sunlight and it felt perfectly natural that men should be jogging and leaping across the sand, voices raised in unusual joy.

Music and laughter drifted over the air, and it was like the entire camp was celebrating with him.

 


End file.
